Haweswater

“First impression: here is a new writer of show-stopping genius; everyone should buy this novel.”

— Guardian

Summary

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 have 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.

  • Here is a new writer of show-stopping genius; everyone should buy this novel. Go forth and buy; prepare to weep.

    Helen Falconer, Guardian

  • One of the most impressive debuts I have read.

    Christina Koning, The Times

  • A strikingly original first novel, full not just of fury but also of the most sensitive compassion for the people and the place, and an understanding of both which is rare. It deserves to make an impact.

    Margaret Foster

  • Sarah Hall's ambitious and accomplished first novel deals with destruction and transformation, the sweeping away of old orders and the impact of change on a small community. Her prose is rich, clear, cold, full of images and immensely sensual. A remarkable debut.

    The Times

  • The writing is capable of immense control and poise. The result is a series of vignettes, frozen moments, like the sepia photographs in the museum visited at the end of the novel. Haweswater is full of foreboding and gloomy power.

    Times Literary Supplement

  • Haweswater is an astonishing blend of the documentary and the magic. Tightly written and immaculately composed, at home in its 1930s idiom this is an ambitious and stunning work of reinvention.

    Dionne Brand, Judge of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize

  • The lyricism of this debut novel (which has just been awarded a Betty Trask award) is edged with a force redolent of the life, lust and death at the heart of Lawrence and Hardy. And it is a worthy successor to both.

    Daily Mail

  • Hall feels the texture of a community caught between two wars ... her bereft territory carries echoes of Hardy but with her own undertow, forging an impressive novel of longing and belonging.

    Guardian

  • Haweswater has rich echoes of Thomas Hardy. While the story of a traditional community displaced by the modern world is powerful and universal, it is Hall’s ability to distil extraordinary moments from ordinary lives that gives Haweswater its delicate charm.

    The Times

Sarah Hall

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About

Sarah Hall is one of the UK’s most talented authors. Twice nominated for Man-Booker Prize, the first and only writer to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice, she has written 10 highly acclaimed novels and short story collections.

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