“Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect.”—Samantha Harvey, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital
Winner of 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
