It is 1936 in a remote dale in the old northern county of Westmorland.
For centuries the rural community has remained the same, the Lightburn
family has been immersed in the harsh hill-farming tradition.
Then a man from the city of Manchester arrives, spokesman for a vast
industrial project that will devastate both the landscape and the local
community. Mardale will be flooded to create a new reservoir, supplying
water to the Midland cities. In the coming year this corner of Lakeland
will be evacuated and transformed.
Jack Liggett, the Waterworks' representative, further compounds the
problems faced by the village as he begins a troubled affair with Janet
Lightburn. A woman of force and strength of mind, 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.
Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria and currently lives in Norwich, Norfolk.
She is the author of four novels: Haweswater, The Electric
Michelangelo, The Carhullan Army, and How to Paint a Dead Man; a
collection of short stories, The Beautiful Indifference; original
radio dramas; and poetry.
She has won several awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize
for Best First Novel, the Betty Trask Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys
Prize, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the Edge Hill University Short
Story Prize, and has twice been recipient of the Portico Prize. She has
been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Prix Femina Etranger, the
Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the BBC National Short Story
Award, and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. This year
she was named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists.
