Brilliant debut novel by a writer who is becoming one of my favourites. Mind you, it is not an easy, fast read. Rather it is slow going, savouring the mesmerizing rhythm of Sarah Hall’s sculpted sentences.

From the opening scene of a man, Samuel, who salvages some hay from his abandoned, almost submerged farm in Cumbria, and sings with many hearts, one knows this novel is gonna be thick with layers of sorrow and love. It also makes one wonder which hearts have accompanied the life of this man and his sheep dog. At the end of the novel there is a count down in tragic deaths, that achieve closure for Jack, Janet and her younger brother. All of them are swallowed by the valley that was sealed with a dam, submerging the village of Mardale. But all three of them belong in that valley, taken in by the earth and water. The story of Haweswater is about longing and belonging.

The story is set in the 1930s, around the establishment of Haweswater reservoir providing water for Manchester and the submergence of Mardale, a small village of tenant sheep farmers. The submergence of the village erases a way of life and prematurely ends a harmonious interaction between a harsh landscape and the people who live off it.

Janet is the hard-working, smart daughter of Samuel and Ella Lightburn, who were thrown together by the Great war, when she was a nurse, and he was brought in wounded. Their other child, Isaac is a bit of an oddball – he loves submerging himself in icy cold water, a fish in the body of a human. Sam grows immensely fond of his daughter, who seems stronger than himself and stands her ground like a man. All is well until Jack Leggett arrives, a city man employed by Manchester City Water, extolling a vision of progress that will erase the tenancies and livelihoods of a traditional village for the sake of the greater good. All has been arranged for with the landlord of the valley by the engineers. A dam is to be built, the land lord has agreed to the compensation, what is left is for the tenant farmers to resign to the works and find tenancies elsewhere. Janet is the only one who wants to fight back. And it is she who arranges for an extension of tenancy with the MCW company, while the dam rises and slowly fills. However, Jack is not so bad as he seems. He comes to stay in the village, has his own sentimental attachment to the place (as a young boy he used to take the train and hike through the hills and mountains of the Lake district, to escape a dreary life at home). He is sincerely committed to the fate of these villagers. And opposites attract. Janet starts an affair with this much older man, not in the open, but nocturnally, meeting for animalistic, raw sex out on the hills. Jack is consumed by his love for her, wants to commit wholeheartedly to it, but Janet does not want it to be known. He abides until the village fair in November (a wrestling contest, games), when he openly walks off with her. Now Janet is in cahoots with her stern, pious mom, and the village at large: how could she? Sleeping with the enemy? And Jack is confronted with a cheeky challenge he set a poacher at a brawl in the pub. He wants a golden eagle. By the time the poacher delivers, Jack has grown in love with the place, and is eaten by remorse for this unnecessary death of an eagle. At night he goes out to deliver the corpse at its high nest, and falls… to his death. Janet is pregnant, and can no longer bear life. She mutilates herself, is cared for by her mom. And ultimately, she cannot love the child. She goes out one night to blow herself and the dam left by Jack to smithereens. Some years later, Isaac has become a diver and is given a job at Haweswater dam, to check on a blockage at a submerged intake. He drowns, peacefully, finally at home. All three deaths signify a longing for the place, a circle completed, a re-unification with the land and elements. These tragic deaths reflect a way of life, an attachment that has become unhinged by the progress of modernity. ( )

Well written first novel created to merge with a fascinating piece of local history, the creation of Haweswater Reservoir in Cumbria (1936/37). Well formed distinguishable characters and an informed knowledge of the Lake District is most evident. A most tragic novel, a little too so, I think.

Some of the things which annoyed me about this book: the never-ending, highly-romanticized descriptions of the landscape; a city man and spirited farmer's daughter starting a tempestuous affair after speaking to each other exactly twice; and the use of dashes instead of quotation marks for dialogue. ( )

I read this book after discovering Sara Hall's second novel -- The Electric Michaelangelo -- and loving it. In this, her first book, you can see Hall's gift for crafting language but her pyrotechnical skills are much more subdued than in the Electric Michaelangelo. Perhaps that is an intentional part of the story. She evokes the time, place and characters of her tale beautifully. It is set in a remote valley in northern England, in the 1930's. It is a quiet farming community, both literally and figuratively. People don't talk much and not much has changed here over the years. Then word comes that a dam is being built and the valley will be flooded. Everyone must move. And with that the action of the book begins. Haweswater is slower moving and more mysterious than The Electric Michaelangelo. It didn't grab me as quickly or as strongly as her second book, but I enjoyed it very much nonetheless and would recommend it. ( )

A very accomplished and thorough novel, set in Mardale in the 1930s, around the building of the dam for Haweswater, to enable Manchester to have water. The main characters are the Lightburn family, a hill farming family living in Mardale, including Janet, with whose birth the novel begins and the Manchester Water Co over-seer of the project, who seems the typical city man, hated by the locals for all that he stands for. Janet is a quick learner and has an independent spirit and she and the over-seer begin an intense affair while the work on the dam begins.
A very sad novel, with few spirits of humour, with the exception of some of the chat in the pub. The story is movingly told and is well constructed. The novel moves very slowly, often with a dream-like quality. ( )