Deep Secret

There are some outstanding passages in this novel recalling a rural way of life now long gone, even though the events described – the flooding of a farming valley in order to make a reservoir – took place from 1935-45. The author knows this part of the countryside intimately, but there is almost too much feeling in this book, both for the past itself and for the lives of the various characters faced by the destruction of their community. Add to this strong sense of loss, a plot involving an untimely death, a near murder, a buried baby and a long-held individual grief, and the general over-arching sense of melancholy at times threatens to obliterate the more positive things in this novel. But Berlie Doherty is such a skilled writer that her story always survives, although at times it is a close run thing as one tragedy follows another with barely a chance to catch breath.