Catherine Hall's new novel The Proof of Love has not one but two epigraphs, and as they relate so well to the story they preface, I'll quote them both. First is Virginia Woolf, from the essay Lewis Carroll:
"To become a child is to be very literal; to find everything so strange that nothing is surprising; to be heartless, to be ruthless, yet to be so passionate that a snub or a shadow drapes the world in gloom."
Then Bertrand Russell, from The Study of Mathematics:
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."
The book is set in the long, hot summer of 1976 in a remote farm in the Lake District fells. Spencer Little is a postgraduate student at Cambridge, a mathematician of great promise, but he's left college for the long vacation, intent on finding a job on a farm. Taken in by the uncommunicative Dodds family at Mirethwaite, he gets board and lodging in a shepherd's hut on the fell in return for his labour, and he makes a friend of the Dodds' young daughter, Alice, a bright ten-year-old used to making do with her own company and that of her dog. When Spencer saves Alice from a mountain fire it seems that the family and the small local community have accepted him and at last made him welcome, but as he settles into his adoptive home, the secrets he has been keeping will not remain hidden for long.
The unlikely relationship between the shy, private Spencer - his mind still on the mathematical proofs he clings to as "pure, uncontaminated and permanent" - and the enthusiastic, trusting, little girl is a very believable and touching one. Life isn't easy for either of them, and while open, friendly Alice helps Spencer settle in at Mirethwaite, so he gives her time and interest and attention, something she's been short of from the grown-ups around her. The friendship opens up something in each of them, and this new brightness looks set fair to last, as does the heat that summer, but of course the weather has to break.
To find out what happens to Spencer and Alice you'll have to read the book, which as a whole is intense, atmospheric, muted and with a heavy stillness. To use a musical analogy, it's like a single sustained note on a stringed instrument: emotive, evenly pitched, with subtle but telling differences in vibration. Some readers may find it too 'quiet' for their taste and their reaction might be an underwhelmed 'is that it?', but I found this deliberately limited range very appealing - it's contained, introspective, concentrated, and for me it worked very well.
I wanted to reply to this, rather belatedly, and say thank you so much for reviewing it and then bringing it up again in your Fiction Uncovered post. I read it a few weeks ago (and have finally blogged about it) and was utterly blown away by it. I am hoping it gets lots more attention as it certainly deserves it.
Posted by: Simon (Savidge Reads) | 15 June 2011 at 11:54 AM