The Land In Winter by Andrew Miller

This was short listed for the Booker Prize in 2025, and while I did not love this book, there is a air of tragedy about it that is hard to create. It hangs over the book like a cloak of gloom--think Claire Keegan. To magnify that atmosphere, the events take place in the winter of 1962, which was a particularly harsh and brutal winter in real life, the coldest known in England in the 20th century. The book opens with a suicide, not related to what happens thereafter, but it is in keeping with the dark tone and mood that follows. The book centers on 4 people and follows two couples in their uneasy marriages as they endure physical and emotional isolation that none of them is quite used to. Eric and Irene are better off: Eric as a doctor and Irene a devoted homemaker. Bill and Rita run a small farm and come from more colorful upbringings: Bill, the child of an immigrant, and Rita, a former showgirl. Both wives are pregnant, and both feel the impending change that will inevitably bring about. Bill is more of a dreamer, distanced from his family and while he has big hopes for the future, he is not naturally talented as a farmer. There is a profound lack of communication that pervades the book, and the coldness of the weather is a reflection of some lack of warmth interpersonally. The events roll out slowly, almost methodically. Not a lot of action, and a lot is left to the reader to unravel.