If you weren’t personally acquainted with Jim Crace when you encountered this, his first published work of fiction, on its initial publication in the New Review, you’d have every reason to think he was American. It had this John Denver-esque title. It was accompanied by an author photo of, so far as I can tell, David Crosby. And then there was the story itself, which traverses both the landscape and language of the States with effortless authority and has for its subject that most American of things, a car. But the guy’s from Hertfordshire!
I struggle to think of a more accomplished start to a publishing career. It really is a perfect story that, when Hamilton produced a ‘Best of the New Review’ anthology in the mid-eighties, he put in pride of place right at the beginning.
First published in the New Review, June 1974. Collected in The New Review Anthology, Heinemann, 1985. Available online here
A Personal Anthology 