SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025



Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Winner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2025



December 1962, the West Country.

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, 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 where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering.



But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards, 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, can you run to?

The center of The Land in Winter is its time period. Taking place a few years after World War 2 in the recovering British countryside, the novel uses the story of two couples to show how the country and its culture are at a low point but pivoting to something new in terms of women's rights, capital, and race relations. Miller never explicitly plots these elements, but instead embodies these changes in a character from the past who is forced into the present by her husband's faithlessness (Irene) and a character living in the coming world and trying to find herself (Rita). Miller uses these women and their husbands to look at this time of depression and self-destruction. This is all framed by a historically accurate blizzard that is used as the environmental symbol of the lack of movement and visibility of this moment of recovery. As a domestic drama, Miller does a skillful job showing the couples' emotional struggles and doubts. In particular, the arc of Irene's husband Eric's affair and a scene of a house part that Irene and Eric host are great writing. There's also a great deal of exploration of Jewish identity in the UK at this point that shows considerable nuance and is quite believable. That said, there were a few choices that felt too blunt given the subtlety of the rest of the book. Irene and Rita's friendship was strong enough just with their cultural differences; Rita didn't need to be mentally ill as well. A few of us also balked at some plot choices near the end, thinking that Miller was straining credulity a bit to make his point. However, others felt any missteps as these were overshadowed by the keen eye and skilled writing Miller brought to this history. Most of NUBClub recommends this one to you as a moving look at a specific moment in historical devastation, reevaluation, and steps to rebirth.