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Product Description
Product Description
'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...
About the Author
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).
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the best book I've read this year (so far) and since reading it a couple of weeks ago I still catch myself thinking about it even now (and for a while to come I suspect) - always the sign of a good book in my opinion. The language and action of the book is understated yet it gets under your skin right from the start. I had a fair few late nights where I just couldn't put it down. A sad but beautiful book.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Set over the astonshing British heatwave of 1976 (if you're not old enough to remember it, lawns were parched, the sun felt like it would never set and the light blinded you with its intensity), Catherine Hall's second novel follows a Cambridge mathematics postgrad as he swaps college life for a summer on a coarse Cumbrian sheep farm. Hoping to keep himself to himself, he instead becomes entangled in the dark secrets of rural life, with riveting and unexpected consequences.
Hall's elegant and spare style - she is not one for overblown metaphors or tricky literary devices - lets the story tell itself. And what a story, it is.
A fast read and an engaging one that surprises, delights and disturbs in equal measure.
Very much recommended.
Hall's elegant and spare style - she is not one for overblown metaphors or tricky literary devices - lets the story tell itself. And what a story, it is.
A fast read and an engaging one that surprises, delights and disturbs in equal measure.
Very much recommended.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Catherine Hall's follow-up to 'Days of Grace' is an extremely well-written modern day tragedy of Shakespearean insight. The tale takes place in a Lake District valley in the sizzling summer of '76, and as the temperature rises inexorably towards a torrential downpour so the heat and passions in Spencer Little's furlough from Cambridge to the valley simmer and finally boil over in an ending as tragic, in the real meaning of the word, as any I have read for many a year.
Hall's knowledge of farming in those years in the valleys is encyclopaedic, and enliven the plot giving breadth and depth to the story of Spencer's blossoming into a loving and deeply loveable man who, as a Cambridge mathematician, discovers that love, as well as theorems, needs its proof.
Alice, the heroine to Spencer's hero, is the eleven year old daughter of the farmer Spencer spends that summer with, and Catherine treats her with the same respect, admiration and knowledge she lavished on Nora Lynch in 'Days of Grace'.
Read this for its very real insight into what is truly love; read it for its no-holds-barred picture of rough farming; but read it with a hanky for the end, - an end which has to be, but is truly tragic.
Hall's knowledge of farming in those years in the valleys is encyclopaedic, and enliven the plot giving breadth and depth to the story of Spencer's blossoming into a loving and deeply loveable man who, as a Cambridge mathematician, discovers that love, as well as theorems, needs its proof.
Alice, the heroine to Spencer's hero, is the eleven year old daughter of the farmer Spencer spends that summer with, and Catherine treats her with the same respect, admiration and knowledge she lavished on Nora Lynch in 'Days of Grace'.
Read this for its very real insight into what is truly love; read it for its no-holds-barred picture of rough farming; but read it with a hanky for the end, - an end which has to be, but is truly tragic.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A great read...really wanted to get to the end of this well written...
As someone who used to live in Eskdale in the 70's, I was intrigued with what the author had to say about it all in those days. Read more
Published 1 month ago by seascalegirl
A hauntingly memorable book.
Other reviewers have summarised the story. What captivated me was the sense of menace overshadowing what, superficialy, was an idyll; the vividness of the characters; the stark... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Booklover Joseph
Atmospheric Read
As a frequent visitor to the Lake District I really appreciated such beautiful and descriptive writing.I loved all the characters and really wanted a happy ever after. Read more
Published 2 months ago by nittynora
A hot summer of passion
Spencer is a Cambridge mathematician who has come to Yorkshire for the holidays in the hope of reinventing himself. It is the summer of 1976, during the long drought. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Martin
Slow and compelling tale of falling in the fells
This is a beautifully written book that conjures up life in a small fell village during the long, hot summer of 1976 with a sense of dread and foreboding building from the first... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Love Books
Beautiful novel, loved it
It's the long hot summer of 1976 in England, and Cambridge University mathematician Spencer Little comes to spend the holidays working as a farm laborour in the Lake District,... Read more
Published 7 months ago by L. H. Healy
Recommended to anyone with an affinity to the Lake District
I lived in the Lake District for several years so always enjoy reading books based in the area. The Proof of Love provided me with everything I needed to reminisce about life in... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Jackie
More than one would expect from a vacation job in the lakes
Engaging story with a few different twists, it is set in rural Cumbria where the main character, a Cambridge Academic, decides to escape to for the Summer of '76. Read more
Published 10 months ago by 79179908
Superb on all levels
Having read all the reviews prior to mine I can concur with all of them in most, if not quite all, respects. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Margaret Smith
A Book That Must Be Read
There are some books that catch your unawares when you least expect it. They take you away to a world you aren't sure will be your `cup of tea' and captivate you, they make you... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Simon Savidge Reads
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