The Land In Winter – Andrew Miller

READ FOR BOOKERTHON

Bristol, 1962, post-war optimism is fading, and a new, modern world forming. Two young couples live next to each other: a doctor and his wife in a beautiful cottage, a farmer and his wife in a rundown, under-heated farmhouse. Both women are pregnant and strike an easy friendship. But as one of the coldest winters on record grips England the two couples find themselves cut off from the rest of the world and old tensions and shocking new discoveries threaten to change the course of their lives.

She pressed the chrome ‘off’ button, then stood a moment – when had this become a habit? – watching the dot at the centre of the screen pulse like a small heart or a failing star until, with a suddenness she could never quite anticipate, it blinked into absence.

SUZY
● I don’t know how Andrew Miller does it, but there is something about the setting of the English countryside in The Land In Winter that makes even the most devastating of events feel somehow cushioned and contained. I felt completely enveloped by the landscape and deeply involved in the complicated lives of the characters. It was a slightly hypnotic read that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

RACHEL
●  The snow is an obvious metaphor for isolation in this book. But that’s okay, it works because Miller has integrated the sense of dread, the slowness of the fall and the drudgery of progression into the narrative and character development too so the book as a whole feels cohesive. The characters’ isolation is not restricted to the physical either, it extends to class, money, mental illness and self-worth. The post-war setting is present and clearly impactful but left in the background to haunt, while the lens is honed in on the characters and how they are navigating the change in themselves and the world.

The two pregnant wives are the most appealing and interesting characters. Though they are confined by their marriages and the time, they both have spark and I found their personalities and storylines to be well developed.

Published 2024
Sceptre
384 pages