This book won the commonwealth prize for best first book. Inspired by the building of Haweswater reservoir, this novel deals with the effects of this project on the small communinity that has to move to make way to Haweswater.

The dialogs are written in a way such way to transmit the local accent: “Git yasil’ inside fust. ‘Twasn’t easy, all tell y’that fer nowt” etc. I find this a bit annoying. I was reading the reviews at amazon.co.uk (everyone seems to love this book!) and one reviewer was enchanted by Sarah Hall’s use of figurative language. The constante use of metaphors and similes was a bit too much for me.

I wasn’t enjoying this book very much but persevered to the end – big mistake, the ending is really awful. This book is a downer.