In Sarah Hall’s sixth novel, Edith Harkness is an acclaimed sculptor who specialises in large and often discomforting works of public art. The piece that made her name is a 40ft witch nicknamed Hecky which looms “high as a church tower” over a motorway, variously terrifying and delighting passing motorists. Edith lives in a vast, once-derelict warehouse in the north of England named Burntcoat, where she is creating a memorial to the millions who have died from a deadly virus.
This pandemic-themed book is set not in Covid times but in a fictionalised future that comes with echoes of our present. It is read by actor Louise Brealey, whose tone of melancholy and longing reflects the stress and increasing otherworldliness of Hall’s prose. The narrative shifts back and forth, depicting Edith’s lockdown, much of which is spent in the throes of ecstasy with a new lover, Halit, and a research trip to Japan where, courtesy of an instructor named Shun, she learns an ancient technique of strengthening wood by burning it.
