Novel set in the Peak District, England

25th September 2013

The Shadow Year by Hannah Richell, novel set in the Peak District.

A well written novel with an engrossing storyline worthy of a Shakespearean drama, and with twists and turns that sustain the book to the end.

Four friends finish University in the 1980s and decide to settle in a very remote cottage in the Peak District and see if they can maintain a simple way of life, without recourse to the modern world. Ben and Carla arrive as a couple, Mac suggests the remote cottage, Simon sees his role as being the proactive one in charge, and Kat has a huge, unrequited crush on Simon. All is well to begin with, but as the cold of Winter begins to control much of their existence, the tensions amongst the house mates start to escalate, and things start to implode. Freya, Kat’s sister unexpectedly turns up and joins the motley gathering. Gradually things start to feel pressured and skewed, as Simon take up more of the slack; it is surely only a matter of time before the whole scenario descends into something from Lord of the Flies or The Beach….?

The author runs a parallel storyline, set in the modern day, Lila and Tom, who have just miscarried a baby – Lila fell down the stairs. The stress of this event permeates the fabric of their relationship and the two go on to suffer a marital crisis, as each of them mourns the loss of the 4 day old daughter Milly, each in very different ways. It is at the point that the stories converge, because Lila has been left the very cottage in The Peak District. And as the story unfolds it becomes apparent how these two stories from the modern day and the past start to interweave and the plot unfolds.

The seasons in this beautiful area of England are described in wonderful detail and brought to life, from the hot, shimmering Summer winds to the cold and barren landscape covered in snow. The remoteness of the cottage, with the nearby lake just come alive in the skilful hands of this author. This novel is definitely one of our favourites in 2013.

And over to Hannah Richell, who talks to us about the book and the setting.

The Shadow Year began as a single image: a simple stone cottage standing abandoned on the shores of a lake. I don’t know where this image came from, but it dropped into my mind like a pebble and created such a ripples of ideas that it wasn’t long before a story had formed in my head. It was all there but for one missing detail: where was this place?

I’d never spent more than a weekend in the Peak District – two beautiful but hazy days at a friend’s wedding – but as soon as I thought of the area, I felt a tingle of excitement. Looking at maps and books, and studying blogs and tourism websites, I could see the area possessed the exact qualities required for my story: barren moorland, high escarpments, rural farmland, sweeping valleys and misty woodland. It didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to imagine a group of naïve students stumbling upon an abandoned cottage hidden within a fictional Peak District valley. It didn’t seem impossible that they would fall in love with such a place and convince themselves that they could live in isolation for a year, farming and foraging for their provisions. It didn’t seem so far-fetched to imagine them convinced that here was their paradise lost. Although, as they quickly discover, it’s far easier to talk about lofty ideals than it is to live by them.

I wrote the novel in a fury, with the Peak District setting proving to be a gift. It formed a real and solid scaffold upon which to pin the action of the book and (being a great believer in that we are all, in some way, products of our environment) it even began to dictate the characters’ behaviour and actions, and shift the story in a new and intriguing direction. Some of the book’s most dramatic plot twists came from the opportunities the landscape offered. Very quickly, I found the cottage morphing from a place of refuge and healing into something more far more unsettling and eerie. As Tom, one of my characters ruminates: there are just some places that feel as though something has happened there.

I wrote the novel thousands of miles away at my desk in Sydney and for twelve long months I hankered for the Peaks and an opportunity to immerse myself physically in the landscape I was writing about. Frustratingly, when I was at last able to return to the UK, it was too late. The Shadow Year was at the printers; I couldn’t change or edit another word. But still, I couldn’t resist. So in April of this year I arrived in Mappleton (a small village a mile or so outside Ashbourne) with my family, the day after a huge and unexpected snowfall. It was freezing. We drove through snowdrifts towering higher than the car and heard startled spring lambs bleating protest at their mothers, their young wool coats matted with snow and icicles. We couldn’t get wood onto the fire quick enough to warm ourselves and wore every item of clothing we’d packed, wobbling round the place like Weebles. We read books, played scrabble, took the kids sledging, ate cake, drank tea. It was lovely, but beneath the cosy atmosphere I could feel worry brewing. Had I got the details of The Shadow Year right? Had I connected with the spirit of the place? Had I made the winter chapters convincingly cold enough? And worst of all, could an abandoned cottage like the one I had written about even exist in a location like this? Wandering the aisles of Waitrose in Ashbourne, my story began to feel a little far-fetched … preposterous even.

It was our fourth morning in the Peaks when I spotted the watercolour on the wall of our accommodation: a depiction of a simple stone cottage standing amidst a copse of trees. The painting was entitled, ‘The Magic Cottage’. I couldn’t stop staring at it. It looked so like the place I had first imagined all those months ago. I leafed through the visitor’s book and found a page of recommended walks, one handily entitled, ‘Magic Cottage Walk’ and I can only think my excitement was infectious because soon enough we were all bundled up and striking out into the snow to see if we could find the scene in the painting.

We crunched our way up a steep hill, our breath ballooning before us as snowflakes drifted silently from the sky. Any hint of a walking track was hidden beneath the snow, so we went purely on instinct, weaving our way up between trees, following the loping tracks of a hare for a little while. It was hard to believe we’d find anything at the top of the hill, but sure enough, as we came to rest at an old stile, there it was: a ramshackle grey stone building, cut off from the rest of the world, nestled within a copse of bare-branched trees, its windows and doors nothing but ominous dark squares. It was derelict … totally abandoned. As we drew closer, a flock of crows took off from one of the trees, wheeling around the rooftop. It was breathtakingly eerie and so close to the fictional cottage that had occupied my mind all these months, that for a moment it was as if I was Lila … or Kat. Something happened here. There it was, my book, made real, and it felt like the most startling kind of synchronicity to see something pulled from my imagination standing there, as solid as stone.

Hannah Richell

June 2013

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