The Land in Winter
On sale
24th October 2024
Price: £20
A best book of the year for the Independent, Guardian and i Newspaper
‘Delicate and devastating’
INDEPENDENT, The 20 best books of the year
‘Miller may have written his best book yet . . . brilliance that is not to be missed’
GUARDIAN, The best fiction of 2024
‘Expertly layered and so acutely rendered it makes you shiver, this is a breathtaking book’
i NEWSPAPER
‘A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose’
MAIL ON SUNDAY
‘Miller is on superb form’
OBSERVER
‘Psychologically acute . . . impeccable’
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘Deeply evocative’
DAILY MAIL
‘Disruptive and graceful beyond anything I’ve read’
SARAH HALL, author of Burntcoat
‘Beautifully intricate, deeply moving, and utterly absorbing’
CLAIRE FULLER, author of Unsettled Ground
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, can 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
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
Delicate and devastating . . . a brilliant novel, but wrap your emotions up tight because Miller steers it expertly towards a desolate, distressing ending
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
Moving . . . offers a full display of Miller's gifts . . . In the white violence of the winter terrain, the narrator's voice wreaths around everything. That voice is the glory of The Land in Winter
Psychologically acute . . . For 200 impeccable pages Miller gives us four intensely imagined inner lives . . . gripping
Miller is on superb form here as he portrays the everyday lives of country doctor Eric and farmer Bill and their respective wives, Irene and Rita, both of whom are expecting their first child. This is a story of conformity and conflict - against the elements, societal changes and the characters' sense of themselves. That inner turmoil is brilliantly crafted, and the depiction of the local asylum in particular is chilling in every sense
This story of two marriages brilliantly evokes the legacy of the second world war. Andrew Miller is a master of nuance, expert at exploring the various chambers of the human heart . . . For all its wintry setting and cold echoes of the past, and for all that it opens with a death in an asylum, this is not a bleak book. The people in it yearn and reach; they make mistakes, too - some of them terrible. But all the while, somehow, you feel - you hope - they might find a way through . . . In The Land in Winter, Miller's characters have looked into the abyss. It makes the ordinary business of living at once very difficult and very necessary
This is a quiet book about quiet lives; internal turmoil trumping external drama. But the delicate attention Miller affords his characters' inner lives makes for incredibly satisfying reading. Also notable is his elegant, measured prose . . . You can sink into this novel as one would into freshly driven powdery snow
Deeply evocative . . . a memorable slice of historical fiction
The writing is stunning and the details of the 1960s setting are particularly evocative. Another psychologically rich novel from one of my favourite writers
Finally, a recent publication that deserves the widest attention. Andrew Miller is known for acute and unnerving historical novels such as Pure and Ingenious Pain, but in The Land in Winter, a study of two young marriages during England's 1962-3 Big Freeze, he may have written his best book yet. The shadows of madness, and of the second world war, extend into a world on the cusp of enormous social change. Miller conjures his characters and their times with a subtle brilliance that is not to be missed
A delicate and devastating novel . . . The novel captures in beautiful, thought-provoking style a vivid moment in England's past
Expertly layered and so acutely rendered it makes you shiver, this is a breathtaking book from one of our most underrated novelists