The Lake District of 1976 and a highly conservative tightly knit
farming community are the back drop for this beautifully written slow
burning novel. Catherine Hall’s writing has been compared to Sarah
Waters and Daphne Du Maurier and its inclusion in Fiction Uncovered
will undoubtedly bring her to the attention of a larger audience.
Judging Panel Fiction Uncovered 2011: ‘Hall conjures the
parched heat of the summer of 1976 as a young Cambridge mathematician
finds light and shade in the Cumbrian hills.’
'Who are you Spencer Little? Why are you here?' During the long hot summer of 1976, a brilliant young Cambridge mathematician arrives in a remote village in the Lake District and takes on a job as a farm labourer. Painfully awkward and shy, Spencer Little is viewed with suspicion by the community and his only real friendship is with scruffy, clever ten-year-old Alice. When he saves Alice from a wild-fire, the locals at last begin to accept him, but as he is drawn deeper into their lives, he also becomes aware of their secrets - and of the difficulty of keeping his own. As the heat-wave intensifies and the web of complicity tightens around him, it becomes clear that Spencer will eventually have to make a choice: between passion and logic, and between loyalty and truth...
Catherine Hall was born in the Lake District in 1973. She worked in documentary film production before becoming a freelance writer and editor for a range of charities specialising in human rights and development. Her first novel was Days of Grace (Portobello, 2008).
