The Litten Path is a sweeping debut that provides an intimate view of the miners' strike of 1984 as it unfolds through the eyes of two families on either side of the struggle. The Litten Path is a novel of the strike as much as about the strike, knitting the intense emotional and political terrain of the famous dispute with the stark landscape of a small town in South Yorkshire. Written in a tough yet lyrical northern vernacular, The Litten Path is grimly honest and tender, comic and painful, a story of the clash between the urban and the rural, class frictions and the pressures of family. It is about what happens when a decision is made, when one cannot turn back.
"James Clarke has written a cinematic novel of such heart, desperation, and as artfully arranged as a Renaissance painting. It is a fearless portrait of a fearful time, replete with moments of wonder, love, pain, anger, and hope. The Litten Path is about the miners' strike, it is also about the human cost of a system that is still spiralling wildly out of control. Both an important historical record and a warning of what's to come."
Judge, The Betty Trask Prize
"Clarke moves easily between the registers of class and entitlement, and poverty and disappointment. The landscape, of which he writes with relish, is raw and ever-changing. When his enthusiastic use of imagery works, it is lovely and apposite: a river "golden as chip fat", a mouth "heady with lipstick"… A ferocious portrait of a time and place, The Litten Path is an uneven book but an important one."
The Guardian
"Clarke's description of the Battle of Orgreave is shockingly raw. The reader can feel the palpitations of Lawrence's heart as he both turns in terror from the relentless police charges and channels his anger and fear onto a nearby camera crew. That powerful description typifies what's an enlightening and energising socialist novel."
