title: The Beacon (novel)
text: # The Beacon (novel)
  
  The Beacon, is a novel by English author Susan Hill, first published in 2008 by Chatto and Windus and in paperback the following year by Vintage Books.
  
  ## Plot introduction
  
  The four Prime children grow up in a bleak North Country farmhouse called 'The Beacon'; Colin and Berenice marry locally, May, the central character of the novel went to university in London but returns within a year. Only quiet, watchful Frank escapes to become a journalist on Fleet Street. But then he publishes a successful novel about his childhood which throws the family into turmoil...
  
  ## Reception
  
  * Joanna Briscoe in The Guardian described it as a "novel of great structural and stylistic control" and as being "an almost perfect little literary novel outside any genre. A cross-generational family story barely longer than a novella, it possesses the light tug of menace and almost invisible haze of tension that characterise Hill's ghost stories, yet there is nothing supernatural about this tale of a farming family grounded in the seasons. The slippery nature of memory is what casts an atmosphere of unease over the novel".
  * Laura Thompson in The Telegraph writes "this short book is richly satisfying. Hill's craftsmanship is masterly. We are always aware of the farming backdrop: the book begins with a superb evocation of rural hardship, whose inexorable rhythms read like pared-down Thomas Hardy." and goes on to describe it as "a little masterpiece".
  * The Times said it was "a moving, evocative and rewarding novel".
  
  ## Radio Dramatisation
  
  The novel was dramatised for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour Drama, broadcast in five 15-minute episodes from March 22–26, 2010.
  
  