The Land in Winter - by Andrew Miller (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect."--Samantha Harvey, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, The Land in Winter is a deft, page-turning examination of married life and a masterclass in storytelling from Booker-shortlisted author Andrew Miller.

December 1962: In an English village deep in the West Country, two couples on neighboring farms begin their day. Local doctor Eric Parry, keeping secrets, commences his daily rounds to patients; his pregnant wife, Irene, lies in the warmth of their cottage, mulling over the detachment that has somehow sprung up between them in the past few years.

Across from her and over the adjacent field, in a farmhouse that is never warm enough, sits Irene's mirror image. Funny but troubled Rita Simmons is also expecting; she spends her days trying on the idea of being a farmer's wife, while her head is still full of images of a raucous past life that her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy they live on--a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself apart from the shady workings of his father.

When Rita and Irene meet across the long bare field between their homes, a clock starts. There is affection--if not always love--in both houses: 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. Over one historic winter in a land still underpinned by the shadow of the last world war, Andrew Miller proves himself yet again as one of Britain's most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart.

"Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight."--Hilary Mantel

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR THE LAND IN WINTER

A Best Book of the Year

The Guardian・Good Housekeeping・Independent

"Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect, also seismic. Cinematic at times, and at others painterly. The Land in Winter is a novel that hits your cells and can be felt there, without your brain really knowing what's happened to it. Superb."--Samantha Harvey, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital

"I loved The Land in Winter. I am in awe of the understanding, the grace and eloquence of it. I kept smiling to myself as I read with a kind of wonder at the sheer perception. There were moments I thought of Penelope Fitzgerald - that moment I have always loved in The Beginning of Spring when the birch trees seem to grow hands - those liminal moments that are kind of beyond words, or explanation, but he finds them anyway. It's a thing of rare beauty."--Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

"With each new novel, Andrew Miller revitalizes the form and takes the reader to extraordinary new places. 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."--Sarah Hall, author of Burntcoat

"Sentence after sentence, The Land in Winter is beautifully intricate, deeply moving, and utterly absorbing."--Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

"I loved it from the first line. 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."--Jenn Ashworth, author of Ghosted

"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 allows us into their houses and their minds - as young marrieds in an English village in the coldest winter of the twentieth century, and as souls passing through the snowstorms of time."--Tim Pears, author of The West Country Trilogy

"A beautifully written, slow-burn portrait of a moment and place in time, it excavates the intricacies of the human heart."--The Bookseller, Editor's Choice

"Delicate and devastating . . . a brilliant novel, but wrap your emotions up tight because Miller steers it expertly towards a desolate, distressing ending."--Martin Chilton, Independent

"Perfect."--Rachel Cooke, Observer

"A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose." Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday

"Incredibly satisfying."--Financial Times

"Beautifully done."--James Walton, The Times

"Moving... 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."--Literary Review

"Psychologically acute... For 200 impeccable pages Miller gives us four intensely imagined inner lives... gripping."--Times Literary Supplement

"Miller works magic, bringing to life not just human relations, but the Sixties too, before they began to swing."--Saga Magazine

"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, this is not a bleak book."--Rachel Seiffert, Guardian

"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."--Lucy Scholes, Financial Times

"Deeply evocative... a memorable slice of historical fiction."--Daily Mail

"Expertly layered and so acutely rendered it makes you shiver, this is a breathtaking book from one of our most underrated novelists."--i Newspaper, The 14 Most Underrated Books of 2024

"Miller may have written his best book yet... brilliance that is not to be missed."--Guardian, The Best Fiction of 2024

"A delicate and devastating novel... The novel captures in beautiful, thought-provoking style a vivid moment in England's past."--Independent, The 20 Best Books of the Year

PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER

"One of our most skillful 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