“The Land in Winter” by Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller’s new novel opens in the West Country of England. It’s December 1962. The local doctor Eric Parry is making his morning rounds. He’s proud of his Citroën’s modern adjustable road clearance system and its heating for front and rear passengers. Eric passes his neighbor Bill Simon, who’s been up since 5 a.m. with his dairy cows. Bill, Oxford-educated and from London, knows nothing about farming and wonders if he’s making a fool of himself. A field separates their houses. Their wives are pregnant.

Eric and Irene with Bill and Rita anchor the story. In the early pages, it’s unclear how their neighboring lives will connect, until Rita, out of boredom, crosses the wide field that separates their homes, carrying a basket of farm eggs. She and Irene bond over approaching motherhood; however, Irene grew up high class, and Rita, before she married, was a club dancer in Bristol. These other worlds still hold them and show up in their divided interests.

The craftsmanship is superb, as Miller explores themes of loneliness, class difference, and damaged souls. These themes play out in the characters’ exposed interior, secret lives: when Eric receives a suggestive letter from his mistress; when Irene makes plans for a Boxing Day cocktail party and weeps from homesickness; when Bill visits an abandoned WWII airfield with plans to convert the area into a beef cattle enterprise, but he needs his father’s money; and when Rita neglects the household chores, smokes, and reads books about invaders from space. Chapters alternate between their stories. That tested my patience. The shifts felt too swift, cutting short dramatic situations I wanted to continue. It took me a while to adjust, and comprehend the masterpiece at play here. This isn’t meant to be seductive escape reading, rather vibrant stage sets of detached lives that fascinate.

Guests arrive at Eric and Irene’s holiday party, including Eric’s mistress, her husband, and her son. Irene discovers the woman snooping in their bedroom but remains ignorant of Eric’s infidelity. Rita dances the mashed potato for an adoring crowd. Bill signals to her let’s go home because he’s uncomfortable. He’s cornered by Gabby Miklos, Eric’s medical partner, who’s sharing his Holocaust experience, thinking Bill will engage with him and sympathize. Gabby says:

People ask now how this could happen, but how is very well explained. There are many documents. There are the reports of meetings where everything is discussed even to the smallest detail. How it happens is perfectly understood. There is no mystery. So please, tell me, what is the question we must ask instead?

World War II remains near for these characters. Bill’s enigmatic Hungarian father erased his past by changing his surname and adopting British ways. Rita’s father, a photographer with the British army, witnessed the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. The WWII references throughout the story are indirect, unsettling, and meaningful.

A blinding snow storm shuts down everything during the beginning days of the New Year. Now, devastating consequences roll in. I won’t give them away other than to say what Eric, Irene, Bill, and Rita are running from catches up with them. Mid-March, a drinks glass from the party is found in the garden of the doctor’s cottage. It’s discovered, we’re told, a week after Eric left and shortly before Irene did too. When you read this, you’ll think you know what it means, but you won’t get it right until the very end of this remarkably good fiction.

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller is published by Europa Editions. A version of this review was broadcast on NPR member station WOSU 89.7 FM.