As night falls during the hot turbulent summer of 1989, two men slip into the darkened fields of England to manufacture strangely inspired artworks that transfix and baffle the nation.
The two conspirators, one a former soldier of the Falklands War and the other an eccentric wanderer, devise vast elaborate crop circles in the wheat and the barley, leaving no trace but their designs and disappearing before the dawn.
In Benjamin Myers’ “The Perfect Golden Circle,” out now from Melville House, the twosome, Redbone and Calvert, are bound in their secret project as the nation roils with protests and police crackdowns. Even as the book explores a 33-year-old historical moment, its concerns — income inequality, police brutality and climate change, among them — remain remarkably current.
