The storytelling is forthright, and Sarah Hall does not hold back with the details about the pandemic and its effects on people.

In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat in north Cumbria the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations.From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. So, ultimately, having given the book a bit of time to settle, I am giving it 5 stars because it takes what we have all lived through over the last 18 months and turns it into a work of art that generates, at least in me, a gut response unlike the response I have had to any book that I can think of.

The book’s energy lies in Hall’s knack for alighting on the sort of authentic detail that brings a scene alive. Well, if it’s any comfort, I had no intention of reading a pandemic novel either, but the scope of this one really appealed to me. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes.Overall I think this is a novel which will appeal to many but which did not to me as I think the choice of dystopian fiction was both overly conservative and lacking impact. There are vivid descriptions of hot summer days, and water is a recurring theme; the river, water for washing, for drinking, sustaining. With classics such as Ted Hughes's The Iron Man and award-winners including Emma Carroll's Letters from the Lighthouse, Faber Children's Books brings you the best in picture books, young reads and classics. When the pandemic first began, my reading friends and I shared a lot of dark humor about the campy books that would surely be spawned (“Love in the Time of COVID”, anyone?