Haweswater

  ''On spring days the tall windows let in an ambiance of sunlight and the single classroom of the school swims with brightness, trapped shafts of sun warming the back of her neck as she sits bent over the day's text, the illuminated writing. On rainy days she will gaze out of the smeared window panes to the fields and the fells beyond the school gates. The sky a deep saturated yellow, dark, greyish blue to the west where the weather comes in from rocks with layers of water. The drenched bracken and foliage on the banks of the hill find their own patterns in the wind, and at this distance look alike wet brown velvet. There is mist low in the valley over the river, then mountains, the spine of High Street, and finally mist again, dissolving into nothing.''

As unbelievable as it may seem, it took me more than a year to finish this novel. I started it last November and within a month I decided to put it aside for the time being. Not because I didn't like it. On the contrary. Its power was literally all-consuming and my mental disposition couldn't cope with such emotional tension. This December was the right time to revisit it, finish it and characterize it as the modern-age Wuthering Heights.

''This is a warm night towards the end of the summer in 1936. The stars are brilliant above the fells, many still unmapped, unnamed, though the solar system is being completed. She uncovers her shoulders and waits, hopeful of his insomnia., A new tenderness has led her here, coming from their short separation. During the long days of haying she missed hum, sorry for her demands that he keep away.''

I couldn't help but view Sarah Hall as a contemporary Emily Bronte while reading this masterpiece. We follow a pair of lovers and the community that have to come to terms with life-changing decisions. A man who arrives from Manchester to serve a dubious cause, the destruction of land on the altar of industrialization and profit, is entranced with a young woman, a new Cathy, a wild wraith of the moors...

What follows is an all-consuming brave obsession. An unafraid Cathy to a virtuous Heathcliff, an exquisitely visceral, sensual journey. Sarah Hall is an astonishing writer. She hops from some fo the most electrifying, poetic and realistic erotic scenes to beautiful descriptions of the Lake District and its influence on Jack, the son of the city, a land that has given birth to Jannet's unwavering spirit.

''The season was turning bitter, the short, hot summer had all but bled out. There was a fresh, woody smell in the air and the red bracken was wild over the sheep paths, twisting its stems together in firm, mature knots so that his boots had to rip through as he walked. Warm rain from the summer was gone.''

And then we are given cozy, heart-warming scenes of traditional British Christmas, of mincepies and liquor, carols, lamps on the windows, Nativity figures, evergreen and stories in the dark nights of winter.

But she can tear your heart out with seven lines:

''Still she cried blood. The sight haunted the workers, marched widely through the sub-region of their minds. It was supernatural, they told each other. She was possessed by a spirit, her blood was still living, still being made in the body. It was necromancy, they said, black art. And the rumours became seamed with sorcery. Thunder broke the sky, added to the tension, to the mood of the crowd.''

The final pages contain some of the most haunting, eerie scenes. Paragraphs echoing the last page of Wuthering Heights and the novel is merciless up to its last lines.

This book was Sarah Hall's debut. For me, it is the best work of a unique writer.

''On this night of gathering storm there is no regret. There is only the energy of the half-hidden moon that reaches her, dying over her hands on the detonator, and even the air, littered with the last breath of the dan's god does not move. She is at the edge of a vast universe, where old elements are fused. Like an old wound.''

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/