The Hollow Land
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Her territory isn't young or old; it's the heart-and brain-matter of people, their desires and worries and fantasies and intricate interactions. All of this is set capably against a particular landscape, and the result tends to be vivid and real. Beautiful, like Willa Cather' Meg Wolitzer, New York Times
The barren, beautiful Cumbrian fells provide the bewitching setting for the adventures of Bill and Harry, two children who find wonder at every turn as they experience the Hollow Land. Everyday challenges give a daring edge to this rural work and play. There are mysteries to explore and uncover , like the case of the Egg Witch, and everyone is curious about the Household Name, a visitor from London, moving into the jewel of the territory, Light Farm.
Gardam is at her best with this novel, which won the Whitbread award in 1981.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of Gardam's Old Filth trilogy will be pleased to discover this book of linked stories, first published in 1981. The collection follows the friendship of Harry Bateman and Bell Teasdale and their mischievous adventures in the Cumbrian countryside or what Bell's grandfather calls "the hollow land." Harry, the son of a writer, is a Londoner who spends summers in a farmhouse that belongs to Bell's family. The duo gets trapped in an abandoned silver mine, nearly freeze to death chasing icicles in a blinding snowstorm, and encounter characters such as Granny Crank, aka the Egg Witch and, later, a long-absent uncle who returns to claim the house Harry rents. Gardam has created an engaging rural landscape with its own dialect, ghosts, and legends. "The evening," she writes, "gentle with warmth of the long day, smelled of gorse and wild thyme and a hundred miles of clean turf." Yet it is not so much the sense of place but rather the shared experiences of one country boy and one city chap that connect the stories. Like Mark Twain's depictions of youth, Gardam demonstrates that the enduring lessons of boyhood and lifelong friendship can delight readers of any age.
