Dear Lord, this book felt long. It also seems to progress in fits and starts - I found myself becoming engrossed in some parts, only to suddenly find myself sloshing through a randomly-placed description of the English moors. The story is nearly epic in scale - it follows the lives of several townspeople who live in an industrial village in Northern England during the 70s and the 80s. I will concede that the author effectively paints the Thatcherite/miner strike mood of the time. But I couldn't get away from the irritating feeling that the sentence construction was a lot more convoluted than it needed to be - I found myself re-reading certain sentences several times, just to understand what they were trying to say. Several of the characters are also deeply unlikable, but to be honest, they were sometimes the ones that moved the story along. It's a detailed portrait of Northern English life a few decades ago and a fairly interesting read once you get through it, but I'm not gonna lie, it'll take some effort (unless you are naturally fascinated by long-winded descriptions of English flora).