I haven’t finished the book yet, but I beg to disagree with the previous commenter about the prose being “pretentious and unreadable”. What Sarah Hall does is to give as much careful, tender attention to creating the natural setting as she does to the characters. There are odd moments where she leans toward the sentimental but most of the time I’m in awe at the old English northern world she’s rebuilt on the pages.

If you want the unreadable stuff try her “Electric Michelangelo”. And even then I wouldn’t call it pretentious, simply overeager and obstructively ornamental.

And all should try her latest book “The Carhullan Army”, released under the title “Daughters of the North” in the USA: her prose takes a complete 180 to match the bared back, roughly honed, brutal dystopian world in her book.