3 Stars
I picked up this book because it was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize and won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as impressed as the judges of these awards.
Set in England’s rural West Country in 1962-63, the novel focuses on two couples, neighbours, who are discontented and whose marriages are emotionally disconnected. Eric Parry is a doctor married to Irene who has left behind London literary life. Bill Simmons is a rookie farmer married to Rita, a former showgirl, who is having difficulty adapting to the life of a farmer’s wife. The winter, with its historically cold temperatures and blizzard conditions with record snowfall, imposes physical isolation that exacerbates tensions and resentments.
Each of the four characters is developed in depth. Eric is not a pleasant person; arrogant and self-serving, he carries on an affair with a married woman while virtually ignoring Irene. Well-educated and sensitive Irene seems lost, passively accepting the role of doctor’s wife. Bill is an idealistic dreamer trying his hand at farming about which he knows little. He has doubts about his marriage “to a woman more suited to being a mistress than a wife, whose past he thought he would be better off not knowing too much about.” Rita is vivacious but scattered and also troubled; she misses the excitement of the big city. Irene and Rita become friends. Both are pregnant and so share similar concerns: their lives are about to be dramatically changed. Though the four protagonists have complexity, I felt disconnected from them. Perhaps this feeling is what the author strove to illicit in order to emphasize the disconnectedness of the characters’ lives. Unfortunately, because I didn’t feel invested, I didn’t much care about their fates.
The narrative begins very slowly. There is little plot and everything is described in great detail. The author excels at painting a picture but some of those descriptions feel unnecessary and certainly slow the novel’s pace. The final section, however, has so much action that it feels chaotic. There is more tension and suspense, but by then I didn’t really care about what happened to the characters. To state that the ending is abrupt is almost an understatement.
The book is bleak in many ways. Winter and darkness are not just part of the landscape, but deep within the lonely, empty lives of the four main characters. The tone is set early in the novel; it opens with the suicide of a young man and the birth of a stillborn calf. Even the writing, with its meandering prose, feels cold and dispassionate. The dialogue is stilted and unnaturally formal, mirroring the shallow and distant connections. World War II and the Holocaust still loom large. Not only is there repeated mention of the destruction in London which is still re-building, but there are also references to concentration camps like Bergen-Belsen and what was discovered there. More than one person has suffered war-time trauma.
Interestingly, the character about whom I would have liked to learn more is Gabby Miklos, Eric’s partner in the medical practice. He appears periodically and is the person who tries the hardest to connect with others. His conversation with Bill at the dinner party and Eric’s visit with him near the end are revealing. His would be an interesting story.
The author excels at creating the tediousness of dissatisfied people living isolated lives. But for me, the book was often a tedious read. I felt only a shallow connection to the characters and the plot left me dissatisfied.
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