HALL, Sarah 1974-

PERSONAL:

Born 1974, in Cumbria, England. Education: Graduated from Aberystwyth University (English and art history); St. Andrews University, M.Litt. (creative writing).

ADDRESSES:

Home—NC and Europe. Agent—c/o Editorial Department, Faber and Faber Ltd., 3 Queen Sq., London WC1N 3AU, England.

CAREER:

Novelist and poet. Has taught at St. Andrews University in the undergraduate creative writing program.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and Betty Trask Award, both 2003, both for Haweswater; Orange Prize nomination, 2004, for The Electric Michelangelo.

WRITINGS:

Haweswater (novel), Faber and Faber (London, England), 2002.

The Electric Michelangelo (novel), Faber and Faber (London, England), 2004.

Also contributor of poems to various publications.

SIDELIGHTS:

English poet and novelist Sarah Hall won two awards for her first novel, Haweswater, and has drawn critical acclaim for her second, The Electric Michelangelo. A serious writer by age twenty, Hall had poetry published by the late 1990s and turned to writing novels soon after. She moved to the United States in 1999 and divides her time between North Carolina and Europe. Hall's favorite form of writing is poetry, which is evident, claim critics, in the lilting prose of her novels.

Based on a true event, Haweswater is the story of the village of Mardale in northern England's Cumbrian Valley. The valley is destroyed when it is flooded in a 1936 reservoir project designed to bring water to city dwellers. Benedicte Page, writing for Bookseller, called Haweswater a "striking rural tragedy." Central to the story is a devastating romance between Manchester City Waterworks representative Jack Liggett, who delivers the bad news to Mardale residents, and eighteen-year-old Mardale farm girl Janet Lightburn, a strong, unsentimental woman whose life is inextricably tied to her environment.

Stephen Knight, in a review for the Times Literary Supplement, observed that the water is the true main character of the story. Knight noted that "lives are governed by [water's] metaphors, and, in the end, swamped by it." Fiona Hook observed in a review for the London Times that "the clean, freezing water, teeming with life, that pervades the valley in pools and rivulets is a metaphor for Hall's own style." Knight praised Hall's use of pauses throughout the text, which make the story "a series of vignettes," and found her phonetic dialogue yet another means of slowing the reader to the story's pace.

Hall's second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was born out of Hall's fascination with folk art and tattooing. She told Mark Thwaite of the Ready SteadyBook Web site that the issues associated with tattooing, "the human body, the mysterious urge to ornament, identity, symbolism, commemoration of life's experiences through art," compelled her to write about it. In an interview with Bookseller writer Benedicte Page, Hall noted that "Tattooing is a record of life, because you commemorate events with a picture, so your skin becomes a kind of history."

The Electric Michelangelo is set in the northern England seaside town of Morecambe (near the author's own childhood home) and on New York's Coney Island. The novel's protagonist, Cy Parks, born in 1907 Morecambe, lives with his mother, who runs a seedy vacation resort and haven for pregnant teens. Cy becomes an apprentice to acclaimed tattoo artist Eliot Riley, a foul-mouthed alcoholic who nevertheless passes on his art and vocation. Cy sails to New York after Riley's death and takes up his practice among the freak show booths on Coney Island. Cy falls in love with Grace, a European immigrant circus performer who hires him to tattoo black-rimmed green eyes all over her body. The palpable facts of pain and suffering are the book's true themes, from the consumptive guests at the Parks's boarding house to scenes in which Riley and Grace are assaulted by fanatics. The pain caused by the tattoo needle is also an undercurrent in the novel.

Manchester Guardian contributor Jem Poster wrote that "Hall certainly knows how to shock, but the shock is an essential part of a serious artistic and—in the best sense—moral enterprise." Poster called the novel "a work of unusual imaginative power and range." Michelene Wandor, writing in the London Sunday Times, praised Hall's "muscular, glinting prose." Financial Times reviewer Lilian Pizzichini remarked, "her gorgeously embellished prose compels the narrative.… If we only see tantalising glimpses of lives, their jagged shards, it is their very fragmentation that is the point."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Bookseller, November 21, 2003, Benedicte Page, "Recorded on the Skin: Sarah Hall's Second Novel Explores the Mysterious Art of the Tattooist," p. 26.

Daily Mail (London, England), March 26, 2004, Hephzibah Anderson, review of The Electric Michelangelo, p. 56.

Financial Times, April 17, 2004, Lilian Pizzichini, review of The Electric Michelangelo, p. 33.

Guardian (Manchester, England), March 27, 2004, Jem Poster, "Written in Skin: Jem Poster Traces a Tattoo Artist's Compelling Journey," p. 27.

Sunday Times (London, England), August 4, 2002, Tom Deveson, "The Danger of a Stranger," p. 45; May 16, 2004, Michelene Wandor, review of The Electric Michelangelo, p. 52.

Times (London, England), June 22, 2002, Fiona Hook, "Force of Nature," review of Haweswater, p. 14; June 7, 2003, review of Haweswater, p. 18.

Times Literary Supplement, June 28, 2002, Stephen Knight, "A Land of Beck and Scree," p. 23.

ONLINE

Arvon Foundation Web site,http://www.arvonfoundation.org/ (May 28, 2004), "Sarah Hall Award recipient listing."

Commonwealth Writers,http://www.commonwealthwriters.com (May 28, 2004), "Commonwealth Writers Prize 2003."

Ready Steady Book,http://www.readysteadybook.com/ (May 28, 2004), Mark Thwaite, "Interview with Sarah Hall, Author of The Electric Michelangelo. "*