The story is set in the Lake
District during the heat-wave of 1976. Spencer
Little, a Cambridge mathematician, keen to escape the confines of university
life and an indiscretion, decides to cycle to the Lake District where no one
knows him. He arrives exhausted and calls on the first farm he passes.
The owners, brothers Hartley and Thomas Dodds are in need of a labourer
and take him on in exchange for his board and lodgings. Spencer needs to work on his thesis over the
summer so he plans to help out on the farm in the day and study in the
evenings. The remoteness of the farm is perfect. Spencer is a shy, private
person and has always felt awkward in social situations. He wins the trust of Alice, Hartley's ten year old daughter and they form an unlikely
friendship. Slowly as summer unfolds and
Spencer becomes more entwined with the farming community he feels a sense of
belonging, but the mystery of his past still hangs over him. As the heat-wave comes to an abrupt end, tragedy
strikes at the farm and with it comes the realisation that Spencer will always be an outsider. I enjoyed the rural farming references and
the evocative descriptions of the landscape.
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