The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

Hello and welcome back to Books and Chat, where good books meet good company. And I'm Christina and I'm here with Ange and we're going to talk about the book that we read in December and it's The Landing Winter by Andrew Miller. So beautifully atmospheric novel that felt just right for the winter season, didn't it, Ange? So tell me what you thought about it. Well, it was just right for the winter, although when we read it, it wasn't actually that cold. It would have been nice to have had a bit of snowfall just in the background so you could look up, look out the window, see a few flakes would have really added to the atmosphere.

But yeah, Winter was a a huge almost a character in itself in this hopefully, and the book was so terrifically well written because. You almost. Felt cold while you were reading it and reading about the two couples who most of the book was based around. It was. Yeah, it was based about these two couples, wasn't it? Both of the women were pregnant as well. Wasn't there fairly early? Long pregnancy, both of them. So we'll talk about what the book's about, and we'll talk a little bit about Andrew Miller himself and the themes that stood out to us.

And we'll even take a little detour into the real winter of 196263, which you won't remember, but I will. Well, that's sort of, you know, I was about 5 at the time, so I don't really remember it. And it was famously A harsh winter. I remember my mum and dad talking about it. And it was particularly so here in the West of England, where we are and where this book is set actually, isn't it? Indeed. Yes, yeah. So these two couples, young couples, experienced this sort of trial by winter in a sentence.

Really, they were. It was funny, just digressing a little bit, but I was just thinking. They were young. Couples who didn't really know what they were doing in so many ways. And they were. Sort of almost. Playing, being grown up and stuff unfolded from there, which made what was going to be an already difficult winter even harder. For them, yeah, absolutely. So let's start with the basics of this book, really. If you're going to describe Land in Winter to someone who hadn't read it, what would you say?

You know, which characters would you pull out to to describe? OK so Eric and Irene live in a country cottage. He's AGP. She well doesn't do anything but really she doesn't do very much, does she? She's not a housework type person. She's she, she floats around thinking. So they live there. He she, she's bored. He's at work in his doctor partnership. Another young couple, Bill and Rita, live on a farm nearby. Bill, I don't know if he always expected to be a farmer, but none of his family expected him to be a farmer.

That wasn't in the the plan, the vision that they got for their boy. But he decides that that's what he wants to strike out and do and naively gets this farm. He's ill prepared for it. He's overwhelmed for for his new role as a farmer, but also. The potential. New role as a father. There's a lot going on that that all of them find difficult. Rita, his wife, used to be a dancer in a club in Bristol. She also feels completely out of place. And then the blanket of snow comes on top. Yeah, and and adds to the surrealness of the surrealness even of work.

Yeah, I think so. Well, if it isn't, we've made it up. So that's good. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. And in fact, thinking about Bill, actually, he came from quite a shady East End sort of gangster type background, didn't you? So the last thing you would have expected of Bill, and I think that was possibly why he wanted to become a farmer. He just wanted to get away from that, kind of. Yeah, that kind of gangland, and perhaps that's a bit strong, but yeah, to to distance himself in every way. Yeah, exactly.

And then we've got the wintry, atmospheric setting, and there's this sense of isolations where they're all kind of stuck in their houses and they can't go anywhere. Also a certain amount of introspections going on as well. I think they're, you know, they're thinking about their their respective lives. And we've got a fairly slow, immersive pacing in this novel, wouldn't you say? Yeah, for sure. And some people, when we discussed it, found that frustrating, found it difficult to get into. Others like me, it evoked some feelings, some COVID feelings.

Really. Now you've said that. Yeah, wasn't it? That's kind of well, we can't go out and we don't really know how to behave. But Bill key worker has got to get the the I'm not on the straw hay, whatever it is animals eat to get that out there to the oh, he's milking cows, wasn't he? And he was doing and that whole, I think having read it since COVID, it gave us an insight into that isolation and strangeness that they must have been feeling. Absolutely. And the fact that you've said that just mirrors the thoughts I was having about this book this morning myself.

Actually, I was thinking of, it does remind me of lockdown, actually. It's that almost that strange kind of liberation that came once you stopped resisting it, you know, and you just submitted to the limits of it. And I know they weren't kind of in it for months, but they were in it for weeks, weren't they? In this in this awful winter where they couldn't really do anything or go anywhere. And and there's a line in the book which I remember, which is something like about moving through the days as if they were something to be endured.

God lived. That was COVID. Did that. Remind you of COVID? Very. Much. That sort of suspended feeling and, and it felt very true to that book's winter, I know, but also perhaps to the periods in in your life where you have to slow down for some reason and you know, you're simply going through. Yeah, yeah. And that's what they were doing, but they weren't really. Very well equipped to do so. Because they were in an environment that was quite different to their upbringing. Absolutely. They were, yeah, yeah.

And a lot of that came out when they had the party. So on it was Christmas time, it was December and then on Boxing Day they had a party and invited the most eclectic mix of people. People again. I got this feeling of. Playing at being. Grown-ups, they were serving the alcohol. There was a little bit of giddiness and excitement and putting the records onto the record player. And that's right. Yeah, it was just. Yeah, yeah. It was strange the the whole he puts across brilliantly, the sort of awkwardness of of how you can feel in a social event when you're young and a little bit out of your depth.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. I also thought that, you know, the winter wasn't just a backdrop drop, was it? It was a kind of an emotional weather, you know, that is sort of stripping everything back to its essentials, really. And the Boxing Day party that you mentioned happens, doesn't it, just before the massive snowfall occurs. It's just starting on that day, I think. Isn't it? So they've clearly managed to get Christmas out of the way, but yeah, after that it gets really kind of bad for them. And of course, that time of year is always a bit odd, isn't it?

So, you know, Boxing Day is done, and then you've got that weird, rudderless period of time that compounded with the snowfall. Yeah, Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about Eric because. Eric The. GP. Eric, the GP. Yeah. Just to be clear, he's married to Irene, isn't me. Yeah, he's pregnant. And it transpires that, I mean, he's been in the war, he's come back, He's probably still suffering some after effects of having been in the war situation. He's also AGP who visits the local asylum, isn't he? And the book starts in a very strange way, doesn't.

It. Yeah, yeah, he stay. With you that that beginning of the book, really. While I was reading it all subsequently. Yeah. I mean, I do think about that and I sort of think it was the beginning sort of felt a bit odd, a bit out of place. But then when you think, when you reflect about it more fully, you can see why he put that in there. It was a way of, you know, bringing people who suffered from the effects of the war. Into the book. Yeah, and that particular guy who, you know, been sectioned to the asylum, who clearly had PTSD.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, but it was different. It was different. And then Eric did as well, and that messed him up. I think he was looking for, well, as it turned out, affection adventure, because Eric then went on to have a relationship with a married woman at the same time as he'd got his young wife at home pregnant and waiting for him. And and the woman that he was having an affair with was his patient. Yes. As well. Yeah, breaking all sorts of breaking all sorts of boundaries and rules in every way, really.

Did you feel like you warmed to the characters straight away in the book? No, not not especially.

The one I liked best was a minor character really, which was the other GP in the surgery. I loved him. I can't. Remember his name? Annoyingly, but he he was just so level and sensible and supportive and kind balanced. And after the awful event happens where the affair is discovered. That was. Terribly shocking, wasn't it? But come back to that in a minute. Eric finds himself with him, yeah, with the the kind GP and is sort of almost wrapped in a blanket where he can start to recover from the, the beating, emotional and physical that he's had from the the husband and the son.

Yeah, as well as the war. Yes, you know. Everything comes out as he starts to fall apart there that's. Right. And in fact the the senior partner GP that you mentioned being in a concentration camp himself. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, he's he's coming back from a very traumatic situation, but he seems a really kind studying influence in the book. Let's talk a bit about Andrew Miller as an author. He's one of those writers, I think, who quietly produces these beautifully crafted novels. And he was born in Bristol, so he kind of knows the area pretty well.

He's known for his historical fiction and that sort of themes of resilience come through a lot in his novel. In book club. I think we've read Now We Shall Be Entirely free a few years ago and Lean Falls stand. Yes. Funny, he does seem to like cold and wintry kind of landscapes. Because Lean Falls Down was set in the Arctic I think. Yeah, most of it. And that again was isolation, loneliness, dysfunctional marriage. Yes. I can't remember the thing. I know. I read the other one. What's What about? Now we shall be entirely free.

It was kind of set back in the 17th century, no 18th century, I think. And it was about a guy who comes back from the war, war that's happening in Europe at the time, and he flees to the Outer Hebrides. That's right. It was a huge. Journey, wasn't it? And again, resilience. And so on. He's being chased by someone who wants to kill him. That's right, and he meets a young woman who's going blind in Edinburgh on the way. It sounds fantastic, yeah, doesn't it? And ridiculous, but it it doesn't read like that.

Oh, it's a wonderful story. It's really good. And then Lean Full Stand was, as you know, set in the Arctic about an older man who goes there every kind of winter and spends months there away from his family and then has a stroke. Yeah, the book's sort of in two halves almost, isn't it? So the first bit is him living his life in separation from the family and adventuring and doing, you know, manly discovering things. And then he comes back a diminished and different person. And the second part of the book is about that sort of recovery process.

Yeah. So it's interesting to me how he uses environment quite a lot in his books, you know, to sort of deepen the story. I find that but quite an attractive, you know, thing in in his books actually. I mean, do you think the cold landscape in this particular book sort of mirrors the emotional states of the characters in a way? Yeah, I think it does. And and it's it also creates more barriers for them. They're already having a bad time and things get worse. There was the car crash with the two brothers.

Yes, that's Bill and his brother, where they're completely drunk and careering about in the car, and Irene when she goes off and the train and the school. Yeah. Sorry. She flees, doesn't she? When she finds out that that her husband, the GP, has been having an affair, she goes, she's she's going, she's off, she's going to go and stay with her parents and she gets on a train journey because of the weather. She can't get where she wants. To go. And ends up in this strange school for the blind. Blind again, Yes.

Blind did that before, yeah. Yeah. It has a very odd experience, yes. Yeah. But again, there's that sort of. Theme of a little bit like when the senior GP is looking after Eric, she's looked after. Yeah, Yeah, she is. She's looked after by mostly the matron housekeeper at this school and the children, isn't she? Yeah, It's, it's, it's, it's strange. So for me, it felt like everyone in the book is enduring something, You know, my word, it's the weather. Their own history is the shifting world around them, really.

And whether or not you are left thinking, you're wondering about what's going to happen with these couples, aren't you? In the future, are they going to sustain their marriages? Be astonished. Astonishing there is. We're not going to give spoilers, too much spoilers away about the ending, but there is a very surreal ending. Yeah. In the book. Yeah, which different ones of us interpreted in different ways. Yeah, in that exactly. And and I think he's left it open deliberately for you to interpret it in your own way.

But that has stayed with me, that ending. I do, you know, when I think about the book, I'm still trying to puzzle out what went on there. Yeah. You know, and you're left wondering whether or not you know who's going to survive, who isn't going to survive. But whatever the truth of it or whatever he meant, that trauma for all of them comes through that because you can't witness any of what happened without them being permanently influenced by it. Yeah, that's true. And I think because we know that that real winter did actually happen, He hasn't made it up.

196263 It was one of the coldest winters on record in the UK. Yes. And, you know, rivers froze, roads were impossible. Snow stayed on the ground for months. I think. And it wasn't just like a cold snap for a week. You know, it really shaped your daily life at that time. And I think that really goes along with our feelings about lockdown, actually. Do you think knowing about that winter changes how we read the novel? It wouldn't have occurred to many people. It's perhaps people in our sort of age group.

And the younger members of our book wouldn't have probably known about it. Yeah, I mean, I didn't really know about it. I basically I'm very young. Much. Much. Younger than you, actually. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. So perhaps. You would read it from a different perspective, but again, I think the connection with the lockdowns meant that it was more accessible for everybody than it would have been prior to 2000 perhaps. Do you think there's something generally about winters and particularly about long winters, that kind of invites introspection in one's life?

Do you think it's a period of your year where you do that? You know, maybe that's why the book feels so emotionally connected to us, because I certainly find that, you know, that the sort of three months of winter, everyone talks about wintering and don't they? Yeah, that's that's a. Phrase now, isn't it? Yeah, it did does invite you, I think to sort of, you know, puddled down, doesn't it? Think about things. Take a slower pace of life. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you know, in the in the far past, people would.

Completely change what they. Did their work patterns, everything else and we've moved away from that with electric lights and and constant stimulation and things being available. But I think the natural tendency of us, the ancestor soul insiders, is, is wanting to slow down to winter if you like. Yeah, I think it's probably quite a healthy thing to do, isn't it? When you think about most of the

most of the animals seem to slow down in winter, don't they? Some of them go into hibernation even. You know, it's sort of like a period where we are supposed to slow down and not keep trying to push through. Yeah, like we do most of the rest of the year, really. So yeah, I mean, I've been trying to winter this year and I'm not sure if I'm doing it very well, but I've been trying.

That's all one can do in life, surely? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that sort of idea in the book, that winter being this kind of truth in a way that everything's stripped back to what it really is.

And there's that moment when Eric, the doctor sort of expects to feel trapped. Indoors, but he instead, he finds his sort of certain pleasure in surrendering to what we can't change. And interestingly, during that week when he's actually trapped inside the house, or two weeks, it might even be longer. His relationship with his wife improves. It does, yeah. They start talking, they start playing games, they start connecting again. Interacting with one another, he's not looking at the next thing or the next bit of of excitement or work, although he does battle and try and get out to work he does.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, and I suppose. It's that slowing down, spending time doing. Simple things that. You know we keep. Hearing about that that they found. And that actually does. Work and we come back to it because it does work. Now let's think about Irene, who's married to Bill. She was an interesting woman in the book, wasn't she really? She's like the one who was The Who had worked in the bars in Bristol. You know she's pregnant, clearly struggling with her mental health. We got that the. Wrong way.

Rita. Sorry. Rita. Rita. Yeah. No, you're right. It's Rita. Yeah. So Rita is the dancer, Yeah. And Rita had some strange relationship with the cinema projectionist or some history there. So I think she'd had quite an exciting time. And so the contrast was was huge. Huge. For her, you know, she's come out a lot going on in in the city of Bristol to come in right out to the countryside where you know she's, she miles from anywhere and doesn't really know what to do with herself. No. And then when she and Irene go to Bristol, Rita's much more.

She's back being a fish in her own pond. Yeah, she is. And and relaxes quite a lot. But in the book, she's clearly hearing voices at times, isn't she? And it makes you wonder whether she's actually got a, you know what could be a diagnosable schizophrenia or something going on. But she's clearly struggling with mental health, taking lots of tablets as well whilst pregnant and, you know, is not having a very nice time. But the friendship that she makes with Irene is sort of the saving bit for her, isn't it?

For a time, yeah. For both of them. I think, yeah, I think that's true. People need people. That's, that's who we are, isn't it? We need to interact. They they were. It could. It would have been very different for either one of them if the other woman didn't live nearby. That's true, and I'm not sure the two of them were naturally would naturally have been friends, but because of the situation they were in, they became friends and. I finally was pregnancy. You know, it's other people who were pregnant at the time.

Not necessarily. Anything else in common? Yeah, yeah, I know. So would you recommend it for book? Yes, I think so. Not to everybody necessarily, but you know, I'd sort of handpick who I who I did recommend it to. Yeah. But I'd say read it in the winter. Yeah, it's a really good winter read, isn't it? If you're looking for something yeah to make you feel slowed down and wintering, this definitely is the book for you. That is not Kephalonia and the beach. No, no, no, no. That just makes you feel fed up that you're not there.

So what do you think you would remember? It's not the book in a. Year's time. Gosh, the picture that sticks in my mind is I think it's Irene. Sitting on the kitchen floor with her back. Against the auger, yeah. That kind of. Yeah, that warmth and you know, she's, she's seeking. Oh, what's the word I'm stumbling around fumbling around for?

Yeah, and Alga. 'S like a warm hug, isn't it? And to. And it's always on. Isn't it? It's always on. And to sit right close to it when everything else is perhaps a little bit alien, You know, her body is working hard to to grow a child and her life is different. Everything's different. And yeah, just her snuggling by that alga. I can picture that. Yeah. Feels nice. I would recommend it, I think. Well, I like Andrew Miller as an author anyway, but and I think if you wanted, if you loved the atmosphere of the London winter pure, which is another one of his novels is an is the great next step if you'd like.

And as we mentioned, being full stands another one. They're fascinating. If you're if you're drawn to stories that, you know, shaped by extreme landscapes, you might like that. So I think in our book club it was generally, well, yes. Yeah, people liked. And and liked and people who hadn't read Andrew Miller before, we're going to go off and, you know, try and read other of his books. So yeah, I would definitely recommend and I would agree with you. Definitely one for the winter read. Yes, yeah, yeah.

So what really brings us to the end of this discussion in books and chat, really. So thank you so much for listening along to our discussion. It's always a pleasure to tell you what we've been reading. So, you know, perhaps. We also need to say if you've enjoyed today's chat, follow books and chat like this, say on the radio, wherever you usually get your podcast from because it helps readers to find us and it means you won't miss any future episodes. Exactly. So do keep reading, stay cosy because it's still cold here for us at the moment and I expect it's cold in lots of places where you are.

We'll be back in. March with another. Book club pick. Until then, thanks so much for listening to books and chats. Bye bye. Bye.

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