‘Delicate and devastating . . . a brilliant novel’
INDEPENDENT
‘Disruptive and graceful beyond anything I’ve read’
SARAH HALL, author of Burntcoat
‘Absolutely essential . . . gently and startlingly beautiful’
JENN ASHWORTH, author of Ghosted
‘A wondrous novel’
TIM PEARS, author of The West Country Trilogy
December 1962, the West Country.
In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills.
In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage.
Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He’s been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that’s already faltering.
There is affection – if not always love – in both homes: these are marriages that still hold some promise. But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards – a true winter, the harshest in living memory – the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel.
Where do you hide when you can’t leave home? And where, in a frozen world, could you run to?
A masterful, page-turning examination of the minutiae of life, The Land in Winter is a masterclass in storytelling – proof yet again that Andrew Miller is one of Britain’s most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart.
PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER
‘Andrew Miller’s writing is a source of wonder and delight’
HILARY MANTEL
‘One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind’
SUNDAY TIMES
‘A writer of very rare and outstanding gifts’
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
‘A highly intelligent writer, both exciting and contemplative’
THE TIMES
‘A wonderful storyteller’
SPECTATOR
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Reviews
Delicate and devastating . . . a brilliant novel, but wrap your emotions up tight because Miller steers it expertly towards a desolate, distressing ending
PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER
'His writing is a source of wonder and delight' HILARY MANTEL
'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind' SUNDAY TIMES
'Unique, visionary, a master at unmasking humanity' SARAH HALL
A beautifully written, slow-burn portrait of a moment and place in time, it excavates the intricacies of the human heart
I loved it from the first line. The Land in Winter is going to be such an important book - one that we need now. The relentless dignity and vulnerability of ordinary work in the aftermath of horror - the eggs still need scrambling and the cows milking no matter what - and the rough and awkward work of love as part of the same picture feels absolutely essential. It was gently and startlingly beautiful
The Land in Winter is a wondrous novel about the interior lives of the occupants of two marriages, set in the intensely realised physical world they inhabit. Andrew Miller's talent is to allow us into their world - into their houses and into their minds - so that we see them both as young marrieds in an English village in the coldest winter of the twentieth century and as souls passing through the snowstorms of time
With each new novel, Andrew Miller revitalises the form and takes the reader to extraordinary new places. His work is truly exploratory, never still in its ambition or human dynamics. There's always immense sensuality, disquiet, drama and wisdom in his books, but The Land in Winter is outstandingly beautiful and immersive in its storytelling. It's disruptive and graceful beyond anything I've read or could hope to write. He is the novelists' lodestar
Sentence after sentence, The Land in Winter is beautifully intricate, deeply moving, and utterly absorbing
Intimate . . . The writing is stunning and the details of the 1960s setting are particularly evocative. Another psychologically rich novel from one of my favourite writers
A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose
Beautifully done
Miller works magic, bringing to life not just human relations, but the Sixties too, before they began to swing