Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter had a lot of success last year, being shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winning the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It also appeared on a lot of people’s end of year ‘best of’ lists so I had high hopes for it, particularly as I’ve previously enjoyed two of his other books, Pure and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free.
The novel is set in the winter of 1963, one of the coldest winters on record in the UK. Beginning in late December 1962 and lasting until March, temperatures plummeted, blizzards blanketed most of the country in deep snow and rivers and lakes froze over. Against this backdrop, we see the stories of two married couples play out. Dr Eric Parry has recently moved to rural Somerset with his wife, Irene, who is pregnant. Eric is enjoying being a country doctor, but Irene is finding it hard to adapt; it’s so different from her life in London and she misses her sister, who has gone to live in America. Despite her pregnancy, she feels that she and Eric are growing apart – and she’s right to feel that way because, unknown to Irene, Eric is having an affair with one of his patients.
Bill and Rita Simmons, who live at a nearby farm, are also newly arrived in the countryside. To the disappointment of his wealthy father, who wanted him to join the family business, Bill has chosen to follow a very different path and become a dairy farmer. It’s proving to be more difficult than he expected, but he’s sure that with new ideas and investment, he’ll be able to turn things around. He just needs to convince the bank to lend him the money! His wife Rita, like Irene, is pregnant and, also like Irene, she feels lonely and out of place, so it’s probably not surprising that the two women quickly form a bond and a friendship begins to develop.
Apart from a long chapter in the middle of the book in which Irene hosts a Boxing Day party and several other key characters converge on the Parrys’ house, the main focus is on the two couples, their daily lives and the relationships between them. All four characters are believable and strongly drawn, but I think Rita is the one I found most interesting. Before marrying Bill, she had been a dancer in a Bristol nightclub, so the transition to life as a farmer’s wife in a small, quiet community is particularly difficult for her. She has started hearing voices in her head, a sign of her vulnerable, fragile mental state, but Bill isn’t able to give her the support she needs, feeling that he doesn’t truly know who his wife is and preferring to ignore her past.
Although I did enjoy following the stories of Eric and Irene, Rita and Bill, I felt that I was held at a distance for most of the book and never quite connected with the characters on an emotional level as much as I would have liked to. Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was a result of the bleak, frozen setting reflecting their troubled, isolated lives and the coldness of their marriages. Still, this is an impressive novel overall and despite not quite managing to love it I can see why it’s so highly regarded.
She Reads Novels 
Interesting…. I don’t remember the winter of ’62-’63 (being only 2ish at the time) but I have read about it elsewhere. Apparently it was NASTY! I *loved* ‘Pure’ and have a copy of ‘Now We Shall Be Entirely Free’, which keeps waving to me from a pile of books every time it manages to catch my eye… Maybe *this* year…. [muses]
Yes, it sounds like a terrible winter! It was before I was born, but Andrew Miller really brought it to life for me in this book. I hope you enjoy Now We Shall Be Entirely Free – it’s probably my favourite of his so far.
If anyone is interested in the actual event I can recommend ‘Frostquake – How the Frozen Winter of 1962 Changed Britain Forever’ by Juliet Nicolson.
Thanks – that does sound interesting!
I’ve been toying with reading this and after your review I think I will, it’s an interesting comment about why we might be kept at arm’s length, not quite connecting. . .
Yes, it felt almost as if some of the characters just didn’t want anyone to get too close, not even the reader! I hope you like it if you decide to read it.
I was in my mid teens in Bristol during that winter but most of my memories of it are fading fast about from the vivid images on TV documentaries. Emily has just finished reading this, and I may even get round to borrowing her copy some time! Thanks for this review. 🙂
“apart from” not “about from” 🙄
I hope Emily liked it – and you too, if and when you get round to borrowing her copy!
I wasn’t mad on this book either. Thought it was rather dull to be honest.
I thought it was okay, but not as good as I’d hoped. I’m glad it’s not just me who didn’t love it!
It’s funny that you should review this book today, because it made me think “Don’t I have that book on hold from the library?” Sometimes I get the emails that a book is ready, and sometimes I don’t. So, I looked it up, but there are 18 ahead of me. I will be interested to see if I have the same impression as you do, or like it better or worse. This sounds a lot different from his other books.
I think all three of the books I’ve read by him have been very different from each other. I hope you like this one when you eventually get to read it!
Well, that’s true. They have.
Interesting. Not sure I want to read it…or at least not right now…but I enjoyed reading your review of it. 😀
Yes, it’s an interesting book. I’m glad I read it, even though I didn’t love it!
Really interesting review which echoes some of my own thoughts when I originally read it. The book also won last year’s Winston Graham Historical Prize, one of whose criteria is ‘sense of place’ which I think it’s very strong on.
It does have a great sense of place. I can see why it’s been winning so many prizes.
A couple of months of below zero and dipping to -20 sounds like a normal winter to me here in Edmonton (we regularly go well below -20, and kids don’t get to stay inside for lunch and recess unless it’s below -22) – that said, we don’t get a ton of snow. This sounds interesting to me too even though it didn’t quite connect for you.
It’s very rare for temperatures to get as low as -20 in most parts of the UK! I think it was really the amount of snow that made the 62/63 winter so significant, though. It makes an interesting setting for this book, even though I didn’t quite manage to connect with the characters.
We just don’t get this kind of winter here, so it would be interesting to read about it!
Thank you for sharing your review with The Historical Fiction Reading Challenge! I appreciate your continued support of the challenge.
That was an exceptionally bad winter and before my time, but I do remember others with lots of snow! This was a fascinating book, even though I didn’t fully connect with it.