The Redeemed (novel) Tim Pears

This is the third novel in Tim Pears' West Country Trilogy. It's been some years since I read a work of fiction  that moved me so much. The world  before 1914, meticulously recreated in the earlier volumes, is now being stalked by the twentieth century.  

I've puzzled a little over why these novels affected me so deeply. I think there are four main reasons: 

•  the main two characters are human and fallible but I really, really like them;
• the transition from 19th to 20th Century is a part of history that fascinates me; 
• so much of the book is just so damned interesting; and
• the prose is beautiful.