The Poet's Wife by Judith Allnatt – review

John Clare's life was the stuff of fiction, which may explain why the nature poet has cropped up in three novels lately. Hugh Lupton's The Ballad of John Clare focused on the folklore; Adam Foulds's The Quickening Maze investigated the treatment he was subject to in a lunatic asylum. Allnatt's story picks up once the poet has escaped and made the journey home to Northamptonshire on foot; and is presented from the point of view of his long-suffering wife Patty, who the poet no longer recognises, believing himself to be betrothed to his childhood sweetheart instead. Having borne nine children, Patty's resentment is understandable. She considers the handwritten evidence of her husband's imagined romance: "Each letter clear, formed with care; whereas reality was messy: marriage he saw as dog-eared and tatty, too well-thumbed to matter." Allnatt's sympathetic portrayal has credibility while her research draws attention to the quaint rural custom of "low belling", in which a mob battered pots and pans until unmarried mothers were hounded out of the village.