December 1962, a small village near Bristol.
Eric and Irene and Bill and Rita. Two young couples living next to each other, the first in a beautiful cottage - suitable for a newly appointed local doctor - the second in a run-down, perennially under-heated farm. Despite their apparent differences, the two women (both pregnant) strike an easy friendship - a connection that comes as a respite from the surprising tediousness of married life, with its unfulfilled expectations, growing resentments and the ghosts of a recent past.
But as one of the coldest winters on record grips England in a never-ending frost and as the country is enveloped in a thick, soft, unmoving layer of snow, the two couples find themselves cut off from the rest of the world. And without the small distractions of everyday existence, suddenly old tensions and shocking new discoveries threaten to change the course of their lives forever.
A masterful, page-turning examination of the minutiae of life, The Land in Winter is a masterclass in storytelling - proof yet again that Andrew Miller is one of Britain's most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart.
December 1962, the West Country.
In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage.
Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering.
There is affection - if not always love - in both homes: 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.
Where do you hide when you can't leave home? And where, in a frozen world, could you run to?
