The Beacon (novel)

The four Prime children grow up in a bleak North Country farmhouse called 'The Beacon'; Colin and Berenice marry locally, May, the central character of the novel went to university in London but returns within a year. Only quiet, watchful Frank escapes to become a journalist on Fleet Street. But then he publishes a successful novel about his childhood which throws the family into turmoil...

• Joanna Briscoe in The Guardian described it as a "novel of great structural and stylistic control" and as being "an almost perfect little literary novel outside any genre. A cross-generational family story barely longer than a novella, it possesses the light tug of menace and almost invisible haze of tension that characterise Hill's ghost stories, yet there is nothing supernatural about this tale of a farming family grounded in the seasons. The slippery nature of memory is what casts an atmosphere of unease over the novel".[2]
• Laura Thompson in The Telegraph writes "this short book is richly satisfying. Hill's craftsmanship is masterly. We are always aware of the farming backdrop: the book begins with a superb evocation of rural hardship, whose inexorable rhythms read like pared-down Thomas Hardy." and goes on to describe it as "a little masterpiece".[3]
• The Times said it was "a moving, evocative and rewarding novel".[4]

The novel was dramatised for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour Drama, broadcast in five 15-minute episodes from March 22–26, 2010.[5]

• 2008, UK, Chatto & Windus, ISBN 0-7011-8340-3, Pub date 02 Oct 2008, Hardback
• 2009, UK, Vintage Books, ISBN 0-09-952695-6, Pub date 01 Oct 2009, Paperback

[6]

• Author webpage
• Truth, lies and misery lit review by Katy Guest in The Independent
• Terrors of the imagination review by Paul Binding in The Spectator
• A twisted tale of malice aforethought, review by Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian
• Vintage books webpage