No Season but the Summer

By: Matilda Leyser

Narrated by: Matilda Leyser

Persephone spends six months of the year under the ground with her husband, king of the dead, and six months on earth with her mother, goddess of the harvest. It has been this way for 9000 years, since the deal was struck. But when she resurfaces this spring, something is different. Rains lash the land, crops grow out of season or not at all, there are people trying to build a road through the woods, and her mother does not seem able to stop them. The natural world is changing rapidly and even the gods have lost control.

While Demeter tries to regain her powers and fend off her daughter’s husband, who wants to drag his queen back underground for good, Persephone finally gets a taste of freedom, joining a group of protestors. Used to blinking up at the world from below, as she looks down on the earth for the very first time from the treetops with activist Snow, Persephone realises that there are choices she can make for herself. But what will these choices mean for her mother, her husband and for the new shoots of life inside her?

©2023 Matilda Leyser, 2022. Excerpt from ‘The Trees’ by Philip Larkin from High Windows, 1974. Used by kind permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. (P)2024 Bolinda Publishing

Critic reviews

'In No Season but the Summer, our world is still dying, but it is putting up a hell of a fight as it does so, reminding us that we can fight too, and that fighting for our lives might start with listening to the earth.' (Stella Duffy, author of Theodora)

'What a wonderful writer. Matilda Leyser’s work is precise, poetic, hard-edged, rhythmical. It seethes with life, and feels both ancient and brand new.' (David Almond, author of Skellig)