The Dam

Ever since I read Town Is by the Sea, I’ve been looking for more books with a similar muted aesthetic, as deep a tone and complex an atmosphere, and which nevertheless manage to be as fresh, original, and necessary as Town Is by the Sea. In short, I wanted more, but not more of the same.

A couple of weeks ago I arrived at my local shop and my favourite shop lady (I should get her permission to use her name on the blog…) was on the phone with the owner, Terri. She told Terri I’d just walked in (I love these people, it’s why I give them all my money) and Terri said, “Has she seen The Dam?” I hadn’t, so the shop lady handed it over, and, after the briefest glance at the cover, I helplessly gave her my credit card. Terri, even without being in the room, had managed to find me the book I’d been looking for.

Much as in the case of Town Is by the Sea, The Dam deals with landscapes, and, above all, with changing landscapes. The story is of a town in Northumberland which was once rich in farms, people, and music. After the people left, it was to be flooded to create a lake, but before the dam was built to flood the valley, a father and his daughter bring music back to the abandoned town one last time.

Even typing those words evokes the feeling of loss so skillfully engendered by the story and makes my eyes prickle. Somehow, even though I have never been there, author David Almond and illustrator Levi Pinfold manage to bring the lost town so to life so vividly, and yet in such muted colours, that it both feels familiar and distant. Why should I feel like crying over a place utterly unknown to me? More than that, I’ve never been attached to an analogous place: the town where I grew up was small, it’s true, but was in no danger of abandonment. So why do I feel the ache of familiarity as my eyes scan Levi Pinfold’s beautiful illustrations (in charcoal, ink, pastel, and digital media) and read David Almond’s masterful text?

Two elements spring to mind: a) The music which is evoked by text and illustration seems to hover just on the edge of hearing. The rhythm of the text isn’t quite poetry, but feels very like it; the illustrations never outright attempt to “record” music (if such a thing were possible in art), but it’s suggested in the flitting rhythm of the dancing ghostly figures. Music easily speaks of loss; whether or not it’s familiar doesn’t seem to matter to, for example, Verdi. When art and text evoke music, it’s all over– my self-control is gone. b) Art, text, and music all draw the book together to make the town itself a character in its own story. It ceases to be a distant place I’ve never visited and becomes a dearly-loved friend: the music becomes elegiac, mournful, almost funereal. We go from being readers to attending a memorial service.

So, I warn you, this is a beautiful, haunting book, but beware of that word: “Haunting.” I read it a few weeks ago, and read it with my Changeling, too. We both loved it passionately.

And it has been sitting on my bedside table since then. Shelving it seemed somehow disrespectful, so it’s been haunting me from that table ever since. I’m hoping that having written this I’ll be allowed to shelve it now.

It’s autumn, now, and autumn is a good time to say goodbye, I always feel. So step out and get this book, and say goodbye to a long-drowned town with me.

And then play some music.