January 11, 2021
Powell’s grim, moody debut investigates the death by drowning of a working-class young man in 1950s Yorkshire. The body of Danny Masters, who faced conscription into the armed forces, is discovered in the River Wharfe. First to see him is Lennie Fairweather, a recent high school graduate living with her father in the Gatekeeper’s Cottage of Richmond Hall. Danny had been infatuated with Lennie, but she has eyes for Richmond heir Alexander, who is given to addressing her with questions such as, “Why are you dressed like such a whore?” Alexander has an equally fraught relationship with his recently widowed mother, Venetia, who he believes is romantically entangled with Alexander’s uncle James. As the various characters debate whether Danny died by suicide or accident, the details gradually trickle out for the reader. Heavy-handed references to Hamlet abound (“Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,” reads the epigraph), and by the time the cause of Danny’s death has been revealed, several other characters end up dead as well. Powell has a keen understanding of the restrictions imposed by class and gender in postwar England, and the narrative really moves, though the love triangle plot’s conundrums are dealt with a bit too conveniently. Still, Powell’s sharp insights keep this afloat. Agent: Samuel Hodder, the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency.
Starred review from November 1, 2020
In 1955, postwar Britain's socio-economic changes play out in the small Yorkshire village of Starome as local estate Richmond Hall swims against a tide of mounting taxes and death duties. Then the drowned body of Danny Masters, a village local, is discovered at river's edge by 17-year-old Lennie Fairweather, her older brother, Tom, and their friend Alexander Richmond. As Danny's aunt says, "That river's always been dangerous." Never named, it winds dangerously enough through the lives of Powell's four protagonists: quiet Lennie, whose father's job as private secretary at Richmond Hall has left her in social limbo, fully accepted neither by the village nor the gentry; Cambridge student Alexander, heir to Richmond Hall, who has begun a romantic relationship with Lennie while in confused, angry mourning over his father Angus' recent death; Alexander's mother, Venetia, whose stately role as Lady Richmond belies her insecurities and passions as a wife and mother; Danny himself, a village boy in unrequited love with Lennie though his boyhood friendships with Tom and Alexander ended years before when the two of them left for boarding school. (Intellectually gifted but resentful Tom, whose schooling Angus paid for, represents the angry young men of 1950s British fiction and film.) While Danny remains relatively innocent--pining for Lennie, his only real secret is the volume of Tennyson he's purchased and keeps meaning to give her--his death forces Alexander, Lennie, and Venetia to confront unspoken jealousies and guilts, some more deserved than others. Love triangles abound, as do deaths with unclear causes. But this is not a murder mystery. Despite an unfortunately dated representation of mental illness, Powell shows hard-nosed empathy in portraying individuals' private demons in the context of social realities. Her novel about love, class, and secrecy in 1950s England reads as if it were written in the era the characters inhabit, her style and tone reminiscent of an earlier generation of reticent yet emotionally brutal writers like Shirley Hazzard and Graham Greene. A mesmerizing escape.
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December 1, 2020
"The universe was made up of two types of people, Lennie thought: those who wanted to smash things to pieces and those who wanted to keep the world just as it." In this latest from Powell (Catching the Light), set mainly in early 1950s Yorkshire and winner in draft of the Northern Writers' TLC New Fiction Reads Award, 17-year-old Lennie is out walking with her older brother, Thomas, and her semisecret beau, Alexander, when they encounter the bloated corpse of young sawmill worker Danny Masters afloat in the raging Stride River. Son of the late Sir Angus Richmond, Alexander lives at the once grand, now fraying Richmond Hall with his recently widowed mother, and Lennie's position as daughter of Sir Angus's private secretary makes their closeness difficult indeed. Powell investigates the relationship among these three young people and how Danny's life and death have impacted them, plumbing both personal pain and shifting class assumptions in a quietly affecting story that can only lead to more tragedy. VERDICT Most readers will understand immediately what happened to Danny, but the point is Powell's deft unpacking of human relationships.
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