Fiction yes, a novel? Maybe. is it about the people or the place? Each chapter a vignette of the life of an inhabitant of the Rossendale Valley in Lancashire. All of them from the rough end of life. There are poverty and drugs there and these people see plenty of both. But there's a nagging feeling that the author, though good at short stories of people plucked from the crowd, couldn't find a way of knitting them together into a whole. But the Valley envelopes and shapes everyone. ( )