A girl and a baby. A priest and a poacher. A savage pursuit through the landscape of a changing rural England. When a teenage girl leaves the workhouse and abducts a child placed in her care, the local priest is called upon to retrieve them. Chased through the Cumbrian mountains of a distant past, the girl fights starvation and the elements, encountering the hermits, farmers and hunters who occupy the remote hillside communities. Like an American Southern Gothic tale set against the violent beauty of Northern England, Beastings is a sparse and poetic novel about morality, motherhood, and corruption.
Reviews
Austere and brilliantly shocking -- Alfred Hickling, The Guardian
This bitter, alarming, occasionally visionary novel of the British wilderness is likely to linger in the mind for some time -- Tim Martin, New Statesman
