Haweswater - Sarah Hall

A first novel of love, obsession and the destruction of a community, told with grace and artistry. It is 1936 in a remote dale in the old county of Westmorland. For centuries the rural community has remained the same - the Lightburn family have been immersed in the harsh hill-farming tradition. Then a man from the city of Manchester arrives, spokesman for a vast industrial project which will devastate both the landscape and the local community. Mardale will be flooded to create a new reservoir. In the coming year this corner of Lakeland will be evacuated and transformed. When Jack Liggett, the Waterworks' representative, begins a troubled affair with Janet Lightburn, things take a further turn for the worse. A woman of force and resolve, her natural orthodoxy deeply influences him. Finally, in tragic circumstances, a remarkable, desperate act on Janet's part attempts to restore the valley to its former state. Told in luminous prose with an intuitive sense for period and place, Haweswater remembers a rural England that has been disappearing for decades, and introduces a young storyteller of great imaginative and emotional power.