“This will be gone...and this will be washed away...and this will never be seen again:” this celebration of a village lost when Kielder reservoir was built is a superb production in terms of language and art work. Haunting, muted tones fill the pictures in the first pages, as a child plays a violin to say goodbye to the family village and its way of life just as the dam is completed. Brighter colours bring us to the glory of open water and peaceful countryside in the present day: this is no longer a place of mourning, although it is only with some wistfulness that the music is played again.
Music unites the times and inspires an understanding of what was lost so that “within the water the music stays...it flows through all the dams in us..”
A really subtle book, rich, celebratory, yet regretful.