An ideal book club read, James Clarke’s novel-in-stories explores the lives of a group of people living in a Lancashire Valley post-industrialisation.
‘A magic portrayal of modern life in the peripheries’ Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun
Out walking Ada Robinson’s dog while his wife drinks herself into a forgetful fug, Harry Maiden discovers an intricate system of caves beneath the wind turbines. Over at the Woolpack one night, Rosco re-encounters friendships he thought he’d left behind at the Stubbins paper mill. Mad old Goss leads a mysterious treasure hunt to the Bronze Age burial site at Whitelow Cairn.
This is the Hollow in the Land: a corner of England teeming with mystery and intrigue and filled with real, flesh-and-blood characters, each of them at a different point along life’s journey through childhood hopefulness, faded first love and middle-aged disillusionment. Hollow in the Land uncovers the small everyday mysteries of their lives – and ours.
‘A beautifully melancholy and worldly book. Clarke’s characters may lead quiet, thwarted lives but his prose is generous and electrifying, unjudgmental and assured. A brilliant new talent’ Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins
