The Land in Winter
Andrew Miller’s new novel is set in the rural West Country during the longest and coldest British winter of 1962-63. The story depicts the lives of its four main characters (two sets of couples), lives of surface ordinariness, yet Miller captures an intensely imagined sense of emotional depths beneath.
The novel is very much about character, but Miller’s recreation of the 1960s is subtly done and very effective. Key events of the 1960s are referenced (Hugh Gaitskell is ill, Dr Beeching is about to take his axe to the railways, Acker Bilk is the music of choice), and we face a world without mobile phones or the internet. The men have jobs (doctor, farmer) while the women have domestic responsibilities, and both are pregnant. After an incredibly powerful opening scene, nothing much happens – yet the whole of life is at stake.
Childbirth is a major theme, not just for humans but for animals. It is potentially joyous but also terrible and fearful. Parenting is complicated; as Philip Larkin memorably declared, no-one is untouched by their background. Physical and mental afflictions affect everyone.
Over the mundane everyday events and the frigid setting, though, looms a much darker shadow. The events of WWII are relatively recent, and every character has been affected in some way by the revelations of the Holocaust. Again, it is done with subtlety. Some characters were in camps (casual references to tattooed numbers on arms), one damaged character was present at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, while another watches it on a Pathé News reel. Later in the novel, a character says (about something else), ‘I will never not see this’ – chilling words that resonate and form the core of the novel.
The writing is masterful, and the prose has all the richness and evocativeness of poetry. Like all great novels, it stays with you long after the final page has turned. Read slowly, if you can, to savour this work of desolate beauty.
