This book was written in the 1930s, at a point where it was being recognised that the traditional, seemingly age-old methods of craftsmanship and technology were being superceded in the machine age. Sturt was writing about an industry he was peripheral to, and and industry in decline. Despite the fact he owned and ran a Wheelwright's shop, he was not a wheelwright, and often refers to himself within the book as the gaffer and the 'boy'.

He highlights the difficulties and techniques involved in not only wheelwrighting, but in a country life in decline. This is less a contemporary text covering the running of a workshop, but a treatise on a way of life in decline: Sturt comments on new wood arriving from North America that has not been air-dried over a period of years, but kiln dried. He comments on the new trends towards profit over craftsmanship, with something of regret, despite recognising the hard life the wheelwrights, woodsmen and sawyers had.

There is also a great deal of appreciation of craftsmanship, and I took from this book a great deal concerning laymen's attitudes to craft, in that it's often unrecognised as being merely ornamental, or without function.

This seems to be a quiet tale about craftsmen in a vanished pastoral age, but provides stark warnings concerning losing technique through a drive to commerce over skill.

I ended wondering why this book had been written. The main character (a teacher) is your typical Camus style nihilist, but he has friends and fancies his sister. It's a move away from Houellebecq, which it is also similar to. The booked seemed to lack structure (a bit like this review), and I was left wondering if this was a postmodern technique, or a lack of style. I also couldn't work out what the book was about - the youth of today? A breakdown in society? Lack of cohesion? It makes for fairly quick, painless reading, but lacks the meat it alludes to in its off-hand referencing of philosophical texts, etc.

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