My Books of the Year

It’s that time of year again. Journalists in every publication are boshing together a Christmas present guide for all of the literati out there. So here’s mine. Please note – these suggestions spring only from the books that I have read myself. This is not an attempt to cast a definitive verdict on the books published this year. I’m lucky to be able to read a huge number of books in my retirement, but I’m sure there are many contenders that I haven’t got round to yet. Some on the list, as the reviews make clear, are there because they are interesting in some way, rather than brilliant. With those caveats, here we go…

The Traitors’ Circle – Jonathan Freedland

My Book of The Year – and it’s not even a novel!

Freedland explores the lives of nine influential people in Nazi Germany who have severe misgivings about Hitler, the war and the whole Nazi project. They are loosely interconnected, their paths criss-crossing throughout the period, and all in some way, try to work against the regime. It’s clearly a dangerous path to choose, as anyone not fully signed up to Nazism is picked off in one way or another. Lack of preferment, prison, concentration camps, disappearances and murder in plain sight are all visited upon anyone who speaks out. It’s brilliantly constructed, with short chapters scrolling through the roster of characters Freedland establishes from the beginning, each one ending in a teaser or cliffhanger. The overall effect is one of a tightly plotted detective novel. An enthralling, thrilling read.

The Land in Winter – Andrew Miller

Listed for the Booker Prize, this is a glorious piece of historical fiction, set during the Big Freeze of 1962/63. Subtle and satisfying, this is an enormously enjoyable novel of relationships. A book for adults, as Woolf famously said of Middlemarch. If Flesh is better than this, It’ll be a great novel. But the Booker judges are nothing if not unreliable in their judgement

Long review here: https://growl.blog/2025/07/09/the-land-in-winter-by-andrew-miller/

Entitled – the rise and fall of the House of York – Andrew Lownie

This book would have been unthinkable even a few years ago, such is the iron grip the Royal family have on the British establishment. But now, open season has been declared on the ghastly Royals. They have presented a juicy target ever since the Queen died, and the tabloids have been plugging away at their pet targets: Harry and Meghan, Camilla, and Andrew and Fergie. The Mail and the Telegraph have been twisting in agonised indecision over this as performative hatred of paedophilia has vied with slavish arse licking of anything Royal. For normal people, it’s the whole corrupt lot of them. For previously arch royal sycophants, it’s worth sacrificing two embarrassing Minor Royals in the belief that the Body of Royalty as a whole might be saved by the judicious amputation of some corrupt and rotting limb.

The book is basically gossip, but it’s enjoyable reading about just how appalling these two were (and are). If it has a fault it’s that it’s just a little dull and not shocking enough. Some of the more shocking revelations Lownie treats us to are:

Andrew routinely leaving his semen stained tissue paper scattered on the floor for staff to collect and dispose of
Reports of forty prostitutes being shipped to his hotel room on some Trade Envoy Jolly over the course of a four day stay.
On being told by a young woman at his table for some dinner that she was a Secretary, Andrew, horrified, replying, “How uninteresting. Is that the best thing you could find to do?”

Nice Guy. Between their divorce and The Epstein scandal, the book is reduced to a litany of descriptions of their serial affairs, financial mismanagement, and corruption. It establishes behind any reasonable doubt that Andrew is dim, privileged, entitled, boorish and utterly boring, while Sarah is a sex machine spendaholic space cadet. Still, worthwhile to have one’s prejudices so well researched and confirmed.

Ripeness – Sarah Moss

What a lovely novel this is, from someone writing at the top of their game. Structurally and stylistically, it’s a treat, with alternating sections telling the stories of the same character, Edith, fifty years apart. The younger Edith tells her own story, in the first person, through the device of a lengthy letter to a child, to be read in the future, explaining the circumstances of the child’s birth and subsequent life. The sections dealing with the older Edith are set in rural Ireland and are told in the third person. Beautiful descriptions of both the countryside around Como and small town/village life in the Republic are subtly blended with Edith’s reflections on first growing up and then getting old. Honestly, this is a must read book. Beautiful and thought provoking. Longer Review here: https://growl.blog/2025/06/05/ripeness-by-sarah-moss/

The Artist – Lucy Steed

Reading this in the depths of winter, this historical novel set in the sundrenched summer of a village in Provence is a therapeutic treat, like a session in a natural light booth for SAD sufferers. A young journalist, Joseph, suffering from the traumas of the first world war, travels to the remote home of celebrated artist, Eduard Tartuffe, to undertake a profile of him for the art journal he works for. He finds the great man sour and difficult, and living alone except for his niece Ettie. As he wins Eduard’s trust and gets closer to Ettie, secrets are revealed. A lovely book.

Crooked Cross – Sally Carson

This year’s long forgotten rediscovery, Crooked Cross was written in 1933 by an English woman Sally Carson based on her experiences on holiday in Bavaria. It tells the story of the slow build up of nazism and the way it overwhelms everyone’s lives, even in the backwaters of a Bavarian village, explaining how, in an incremental way, ordinary tolerant people can be drawn into the most despicable acts.

A timely text in the light of the current wave of racist populism that is sweeping across Europe and America. Oh no, I forgot. We’re not allowed to make any Nazi/Fascist comparisons between today’s political titans and those of the 1930s. Actually, it’s impossible not to, if you have any regard to historical facts. It’s a worthy revival, if only to publicise the parallels between then and now and between them and us, but it shows its age. Despite the subject matter, it lacks real drama and/or tension and didnt quite live up to its reputation.

Our evenings- Alan Hollinghurst

I must confess, I’ve started several of Hollinghurst’s novels, and have never liked, much less finished, one of them. It’s just one of those things – he’s lionised by the literary establishment, but for some reason, he just doesn’t do it for me. This latest got rave reviews and it starts brilliantly. There was a moment when I thought this was going to be the Hollinghurst novel where I finally got it, but unfortunately, by the end I was a little underwhelmed. But reader, I finished it! And that’s a first.

It’s a whole life story novel that follows Dave Win’s progress as a gay, half English, half Burmese actor, navigating public school, the disapproval of his family and the casual racism and homophobia he encounters. The relationship with his mother is beautifully observed, but another relationship, with the bully at school who goes on to achieve high office in a Tory government, promises much, but ultimately fizzles out without delivering. If you don’t share my antipathy towards Hollinghurst, it’s definitely worth a punt

What We Can Know – Ian Mcewan

The latest from McEwan shows his powers are undiminished, after a career at the very top of English fiction. The book is framed as an academic literary investigation, in a Britain clinging on after a series of ecological disasters in 2125, into a celebrated poet and climate change denier from the Britain of 2020. It’s a strange mixture, at times compelling, often fascinating, and at other times annoying.

The good stuff is the unrolling of the climate disaster and the unforeseen impacts that has had (Nigeria is the preeminent power, and America has disintegrated into a ferret sack of competing warlords and clans.) The bad stuff is the suffocating superiority of the middle class literary types, with their casual snobbery, all, seemingly, having affairs with anyone and everyone. I’d like to think McEwan is trying to skewer them and their ghastly attitudes, but I fear that he may actually share many of them. That’s harsh – it’s beautifully written, as ever, and worth a read.

Isla – Jim Pollard.

One of the pleasures of exploring the work of independent writers is that you come across things that deserve much greater exposure. This one’s a gem. Pollard, an ex-teacher and journalist, has specialised in books about men’s health, accumulating an impressive back catalogue, irregularly punctuated by his novels. His latest, Isla, is inspired by the Madeleine McCann case, and explores the aftermath over a lifetime of such a traumatic event. It’s set in Paris and London, and beautifully evokes both cities. There are no easy answers to the questions the novel poses and no obvious ones either. This is a great read.

Longer Review here: https://growl.blog/2025/05/21/isla-by-jim-pollard-a-review/

And you can buy it here: notonlywords.co.uk/isla

Main review here:

Tony interruptor- Nicola Barker

Barker is consistently one of the most interesting of British novelists, who deserves a much higher profile. Her books are often odd, awkward little things, and this one is no exception. It would be a delightful stocking-filler.

Seascraper – Benjamin Wood

An excellent story of a young man who lives with his mother on the grim and exposed coastline of Morecambe Bay. He scrapes a living, continuing the work learned alongside his late father, pillaging the cockle beds in the shallows of the Irish Sea. It’s hard work, alone save for his horse in all weathers. He keeps his sanity by writing and playing songs on a second hand guitar, ( all concealed from his mother) working towards playing the folk night of a local pub. His world is suddenly turned upside down by the appearance of an American film man who descends on the community researching the beach as a location for his next film. It’s a small and perfectly formed gem.

Obviously, the real book of the year is my very own, A Cold Wind Blows. The book is part 2 of a fantasy trilogy, set in Yngerlande, a parallel world to England in 1795. Yngerlande is a place of absolute and perfect equality, but their tolerance and liberalism is put at risk by an attempted counter revolution from the surviving relatives of the Old Mad King from generations before. They want to overturn all of the social advances made and establish a patriarchal, white supremacist regime. Thomas Trelawney, a thirteen year old boy from modern day England, finds himself the possessor of previously unknown powers, when he is summoned to help protect the Realm from the forces of Darkness. Think of it as Harry Potter meets Lyra Silvertongue meets Outlander. “A slice of Fantasy brilliance” said one reviewer. And they were right! You can buy it here: https://shorturl.at/UcRWb

Those that didn’t quite make it…

This could be for a number of reasons: Only just come out, I’ve heard about and intend to read, waiting for it to arrive. That sort of thing. Here they are:

Lots to read in 2026!

The Rose Field by Philip Pullman – a Review.

A major disappointment as the metaphors run out of road.

Spoiler Alert! Unhelpful plot revelations ahead!

A new book by Philip Pullman is usually something of a treat. A literary event in fact. This one has particular significance – it’s the concluding volume of the Book of Dust trilogy, and as he gets older (he’s 78 now) there is always the fear that it is the last he will ever write. Before I go any further, it’s only right that I reveal myself to be a massive fan. Pullman is one of my literary heroes and an inspiration as far as my own writing is concerned. The Northern Lights trilogy is fully deserving of all the plaudits heaped upon it, not least for the fact that, by the end, it has become one of the all time great love stories.

So it’s with some sadness that I have to report that The Rose Field is a major disappointment. It’s full of lovely writing, and Pullman’s imagination (a key consideration in the light of one of the book’s themes) is in full working order, but as a coherent piece of story telling, it fails to land.

It comes in at a baggy 620 pages long, and I got the impression it could have just as well have finished after 1,620 pages, and we still wouldn’t have been anywhere near a satisfactory conclusion. Pullman, as a Great Man of Letters, has now achieved the status of “He Who Cannot Be Edited”. Pity the poor editor assigned to the task: “Phillip, do you really need all those bits with the characters discussing Dust?” is a question only a very brave soul, with no aspirations to a long term career in publishing, would ask. But it is the question that shouts out of almost every page. By the time we get to page 554 and Lyra and Malcolm start discussing Binary Absolutism, it’s screaming.

Equally unfortunately, lots of other things emerge, trade winds that blow the good ship Narrative off course, time and time again. Crucial developments occur completely out of the blue – the fact that the loathsome Olivier Bonneville is the half brother of Lyra is revealed towards the end, seemingly as another device to keep the pot boiling. Minor characters emerge and then disappear. Supposedly important characters do exactly the same. (I’m thinking of Leila Pervani here). Two thirds of the way through the book, the narrative drive of the book appears to suddenly come from a “battle” against a character who has sprung out of nowhere, the sorcerer, Sorush, involving armies of various creatures. There doesn’t appear to be any plausible reason for this development in terms of characters, relationships, or previous events, and is there simply to add a bit of action to keep the reader engaged. It seems Pullmann has taken a leaf out of Tolkien’s book, and emphasised the “quest” aspect of the story with this out-of-kilter battle. Oh the irony, after Pullman’s much discussed dismissal of Tolkien as being “thin” and not being about much. This is what he says about The Rose Field himself: “I think of The Rose Field as partly a thriller and partly a bildungsroman: a story of psychological, moral and emotional growth. But it’s also a vision. Lyra’s world is changing, just as ours is. The power over people’s lives once held by old institutions and governments is seeping away and reappearing in another form: that of money, capital, development, commerce, exchange.”

That’s one of Pullman’s greatest difficulties here. He makes the key mistake of thinking he is writing about something and Something Very Important at that, so the story takes a back seat. Tolkien could teach him a thing or two about telling a compelling tale.

**Just a reminder of the greatness that is Lyra Silvertongue and Pan**

All of this adds to the impression that Pullman is desperately trying to write himself out of several of the corners that the first two (five?) volumes have backed him into. One of these is the growing relationship between Lyra and Malcolm Poulstead. The awakening of friendship into love is something Pullman has form on. The changing of the relationship between Lyra and Will in the Northern Lights trilogy was beautifully done, and forms the backbone of the books. He attempts the same thing here, using the daemons of these two characters to add depth and subtlety to the development. Once again, it’s really well done (apart from the nagging suspicion he’s re-treading old ground), but then, right at the end, he pulls the rug from underneath his readers. It’s as if he’s just realised that the relationship between two characters who are eleven years apart in ages, where Malcolm used to be Lyra’s teacher, could be deemed a little problematic, a little too groomy. In one conversation, right at the end of the book, he trashes all of the careful build up, by having Pan tell Lyra that Malcolm was in love with Alice and that they (Pan and Lyra) “will have to put the idea in his head”. Job done. One more loose end tied up as if by magic.

There’s similar botching when it comes to explaining Dust, “Alkahest”, Rose oil and Pan’s decision to leave Lyra at the end of The Secret Commonwealth to go in search of Lyra’s missing “Imagination”. It’s bound to fail, because they are ideas born of beautiful, powerful,vague metaphors. Their power and beauty comes from their very vagueness – that’s how metaphors work – through association and connotation. The minute you try to rationalise them, their power and beauty drain away and they are left like the Wizard of Oz after the curtain is ripped aside – small and a little pathetic.

By the end of the book I was torn. I couldn’t make up my mind whether Pullman should have stopped after finishing Northern Lights and turned to something completely new, or whether I should be grateful he started The Book Of Dust for the pleasures it produced. The trouble is that once you have set the bar so high, it’s a very long way to fall when you don’t quite get it right the second time around. Maybe it’s time to write another Ruby in The Smoke – short and punchy, and not a binary absolute in sight.

Another Great Review for A Cold Wind Blows

“A slice of fantasy brilliance”

Always great to get reviews out of the blue from someone who so clearly gets it. This one from AndrewSarahBookReviewer. Yes, that’s their mysterious handle. Have a read and see if you agree by reading it yourself. Links to Amazon at the end of this blogpost.

“A Cold Wind Blows doesn’t read like something written by a man testing his first dip into children’s fantasy. It reads like someone who knows how to pull history, myth, and magic into one big imaginative storm, and then quietly pretend it’s all casual. But here’s the catch, it’s almost criminal that a story this rich, this layered, and this cinematically British isn’t stirring up more noise online.

Let’s start from the top.
You’ve got Silas Cummerbund, a name that sounds like it belongs in both a Dickens novel and a secret magical agency. The man’s half mentor, half mystery, and fully fascinating. Then there’s Princess Gaia, trained to harness her hidden powers, facing danger, betrayal, and probably more character development than most fantasy heroines get in a trilogy.

The world of Yngerlande isn’t just imagined; it’s constructed, with history breathing beneath the soil, loyalty and treachery doing a slow, deadly waltz, and danger watching from the kitchen (because, of course, there’s a suspicious kitchen boy named Shrike ). You’ve got everything, a sharp mind for structure, a love of lore, a solid moral compass, and that old-school narrative warmth modern fantasy often lacks.

It’s classic fantasy craftsmanship, the kind that brings back that old-school sense of wonder and storytelling gravitas. You can feel the teacher in you on every page, that precise attention to pacing, that clean sentence rhythm, the moral backbone hiding beneath the adventure. There’s something deeply nostalgic about your writing, it’s the kind of story that whispers “just one more chapter” until the reader realizes it’s 3 a.m. and they’ve stopped pretending to be an adult.”

Many thanks to Sarah for such a wonderful Review!

See for yourself – click here to buy: https://shorturl.at/HYY27

Book 1 in the trilogy, The Yngerlande Variations, is available here. The Watcher and The Friend: https://shorturl.at/4OAZK

How Not To Be A Political Wife

Sarah Vine’s account of the misery of being Mrs Michael Gove

Another Tory account of the worst successive governments in modern history, with barely a sorry in it. Another magnificent acquisition from Beckenham library, just to reassure you, dear loyal readers, that I’m not contributing a penny to Sarah Vine’s hardship fund. More of that later.Think of this as selfless public service on my part. I’ve read this dull trudge so that you don’t have to.

On the surface, this was a book with massive potential. It tells the story, from an insider’s point of view, of the rise and fall of Michael Gove, one of the key movers and shakers in the Cameron project, and Brexit, and its aftermath. It’s a tale rich in snobbery, sycophancy, the psychological alienation of the class traitor and Shakespearean levels of betrayal. Throw in a broken marriage and a trail of lost friendships and you have a recipe for a juicy stew. Unfortunately, it tastes like a tin of bland, mass -produced soup with not enough salt.

Just like that other towering political tome, Ungovernable by that Complete Unknown, Simon Hart, Vine’s book is a virtuoso display of Not Reading The Room. The levels of denial, delusion and deceit are off the scale. Vine and her ilk simply cannot conceive that any other government than a Conservative one is either possible or legitimate. Any break in that hegemony is merely a temporary blip, an annoying hiatus while the ruling class have to wait a bit until the billionaires do their work through the media, mainstream and social, telling enough lies to make the electorate forget exactly how ghastly they were in office. For years the enemy for the Ghastly Party was Labour, but strange things have happened in recent years. Now, Labour in government have metamorphosed into a vile tribute act for the people they replaced, saying and enacting a whole series of authoritarian, dumbass policy positions that are just as bad ( and in some cases worse) of those espoused by the party that have just been ousted. Their brilliant advisors have concluded that the thing that will really seal the deal with an electorate who were heartily sickened by the corruption and incompetence of the Tories, apparently untouched by the collapse of civil society and its infrastructure, is to, um, pretend to be the Tories. New Labour transformed miraculously into New Tory. Was this Blair’s secret plan all along? Yes, Peter, that will do it. You really are a tactical and strategic genius.

I digress. Vine’s book provides a terrifying portrait of the world inhabited by the ruling classes and those temporarily given house room in return for services rendered: Skiing holidays (where she copped off with Michael Gove – that tells you how bad it must have been), Tuscan villas, hobnobbing with minor royals, wine-fueled jollies at Chequers. And it’s made very clear that both Gove and Vine were intruders, not quite made of the same right stuff as the Golden Cameroons and their entourage. There’s a telling recollection of George Osborne’s reaction to the news that Gove was hitching his colours to the Leave campaign.

“But..but..” he spluttered, “We made Michael Gove. Who was he before? He owes us his whole bloody career! How can he not support us?”

Class will out. In their eyes, Gove and Vine (particularly Gove), were oiks, to be laughed at behind their backs. Vine shows a Gove desperate to keep up, to be accepted, to varnish over his background. Spending too much on wine, clothes, stuff, anything and everything to signal he knew what the accessories were that were needed to keep your place, socially and in terms of your career, at the top table.

Vine is also strangely keen to put to bed, as it were, the persistent rumours that have dogged Gove about his sexuality. To do so she furnishes the sympathetic reader with clinching details about Michael’s life, including how he is always drenched in the most expensive and exclusive fragrances, beautifully dressed and before he met Vine shared a number of flats with scores of very gay and very out men. Honestly, it’s astonishing the hurtful rumours began in the first place.

“Michael enjoyed the intellectual company of men probably more than women. And he did have a lot of gay friends (still does) plus as a minister he had a habit of surrounding himself with incredibly handsome gay men. But that was all circumstantial. A few swallows do not a summer make.”

Vine’s razor sharp wielding of evidence to the fore as usual. That’s those rumours comprehensively scotched.

Other details are helpfully provided to give a full and rounded picture of Gove the polymath. Her account of his heroic struggle to liberate Working Class children from the tentacles of the Communist Education Establishment (aka Local Education Authorities) is a textbook example of the careless disregard of facts so entrenched in Journalism (particularly those taking the Daily Mail shilling). Take a few vague and fuzzy impressions circulated endlessly by the establishment (Working Class kids are thick, State schools are useless, Posshies are innately superior), come up with some populist “common sense” solutions (make kids read 19th century Literature, turn the curriculum into a relentless list of facts to be learned, swamp the system with grinding and irrelevant exams and resits) and bingo you have a recipe that will inevitably have to be unpicked at some point in the future as the full scale of the disaster it will inevitably create becomes impossible to defend.

She adds stories that illustrate Gove’s difficulties in navigating the humdrum world of us mere mortals: repeatedly crashing the car, not doing the washing up, head always stuck in a very expensive book (he’s very clever you know). This latter habit was deployed very helpfully when Mrs Gove was in labour and again when they were moving out of the family home. Not for Mikey the workaday drudgery of filling packing cases or loading the car or checking on the children. No sir – he had to take care of the polymath type tasks, reading another impenetrable, expensive (but oh so impressve) tome on yet another 19th century Tory bigwig politician grandee. Much more effective than insisting the midwife bring on the epidural. “What is pain?” mused the Govester loftily, in between his wife’s screams, as he sipped another glass of vintage red after a hard day in the House of Commons.

Well, we all know what he got up to there. And in clubs across the land after his unfortunate divorce.

https://share.google/images/HtaTeVFvyBXyzu8Uv

The book only becomes interesting when Vine talks about her childhood. It’s a sad tale, and one that succeeds in creating some sympathy for the hitherto unlikeable author. Her father sounds absolutely ghastly and Vine’s life was made very difficult by the incessant undermining and criticising of her by a drunken, philandering patriarch. She’s done well to survive it, quite frankly.

But that’s as far as my sympathy extends. It’s hard to feel for someone who makes their money from endless articles in The Daily Mail churning out utter tripe – nasty, vindictive, xenophobic, classist nonsense designed to tickle the prejudices of their “patriotic” readership. She (and it) have a lot to answer for.

Finally, we get to the main psychological cry for help that runs like a golden thread throughout the book: her friendship with Samantha Cameron. Her evident neediness makes it uncomfortable to read at times. The fallout from Gove jumping ship over Brexit led to an immediate and draconian excommunication from the Golden Circle of The Cameroons. Vine howls in disbelief, pain, apology. You can almost see the snot-stained, tear-drenched face of the deranged jilted lover.

To parody John Crace, the digested read of this book can be only one thing:

“Please, please, Sam, (cos I’m her closest friend, readers) take me back. Be my friend again. Let me back in. Please… I’ll do the washing up”

More 5 Star Reviews Coming In for A Cold Wind Blows!

It’s always lovely when positive reviews keep coming in for a new book. This one is from Rebecca De Figueiredo from the Online Book Club. There are also some great reviews on Amazon too. You can buy the book and see the reviews here:

https://shorturl.at/Xp55K

Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of “A Cold Wind Blows” by R J Barron.]

Book Cover

5 out of 5 stars

Title: A Cold Wind Blows
Author: R J Barron

How captivating and otherworldly this book is! The reader will soon find out how apt the title is. It was well balanced between reality, shape-shifting, and magic. There were people and places that are actually real, such as King James’ Palace and the River Ouse, included in a deep and mesmerising story. I don’t usually enjoy this sort of genre, preferring more adult drama, but there was something innocent and entertaining about this one. In my experience, books of this genre have a tendency to be all over the place, with far too many characters and words that are difficult to pronounce; some even have a glossary (which child is going to refer to a glossary every five minutes?!). The only word that took a bit of time to get used to was ‘Yngerland’, which is the kingdom in question. The characters were likable, with the usual malevolent dark characters and holier-than-thou good ones. There is also a character who is neither on one side nor the other: the reader will find out.

At just the right length, with an inviting introduction, chunky middle, and mysterious ending, this book takes the reader on a magical adventure. The magic is fairly subtle.

I would have loved some illustrations: pictures of the steedwings, or huge mansions, or a character or two, but perhaps it’s better for the young mind to create its own images.

I found the editing to be perfect and did not notice any typos. The prose was cleverly written in that most older children will be able to read it, and it would be a marvellous book to read out loud. I will award it five out of five stars.

******
A Cold Wind Blows
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon

The Land in Winter – by Andrew Miller

I’ve always believed the hierarchy of fictional respectability is just another manifestation of keeping the oiks in their place. Like the concept of a fine palate when it comes to food, having good literary taste is a device to be able to confidently feel and express your own superiority over the lumpen masses. At the top of this pyramid of worth, sits Literary Fiction, smoking a fat cigar, and flicking the ash at the lower classes s/he straddles: reading group fiction, detective novels, romance, horror, sci fi, through an ever-multiplying collection of genres and subgenres, ending in the sludge of graphic novels and comics.

You just need to give your head a shake to see that literary fiction is just another genre, with its own conventions and expectations. Language is privileged over plot, obscurity is King (or Queen), ideas rub shoulders amiably, sides are resolutely not taken, and difficulty is wholeheartedly embraced. If you can make the reader feel they are missing the point, that they just don’t get it, you’re on your way to the shortlist of some prestigious literary competition or other.

But then, every now and again, a literary novel comes along that stops me in my tracks and gives pause for thought, as previously unshakeable theories begin to teeter and the cracks spread. This one is the latest offering from Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter. He’s carved a niche for himself as a writer of historical fiction, comfortably sitting at the literary end of the spectrum, rather than the Brother Cadfael end. Novels such as Pure, and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free showcase his undoubted talent as far as establishing interesting characters and subtly drawn relationships in an entirely authentic and credible historical setting.

He’s done it again in The Land in Winter, but this time he has chosen an era still within living memory: the early 60s. To be more precise, his novel is located in the winter of 1962/63, a period that has entered the myth of our island story as the hardest winter since the frost fairs of the early 19th century.

This was a time when the whole nation was cut off under Impossibly deep snow drifts for months on end, from December until March/April. I was about six years old at the time and have vivid memories of walking to school through trenches dug in the snow on the pavements that went above my head.

It was a time before the swinging sixties. Pre-Beatles too, at least as far as their impact on broader society. Miller captures the grim, narrow atmosphere perfectly. This was a black and white England, before technicolor, still uncomfortably close to rationing, still in the grip of deference, hypocrisy and snobbery.

The book starts obliquely, in the grand tradition of literary fiction, with one patient at a residential psychiatric hospital, unable to sleep in the middle of the night, discovering the body of another, a patient who has committed suicide. Then they disappear from the novel completely. They do reappear, much later, after four other characters have claimed centre stage for themselves. By the time they do come back, the book has turned into something rich, deep and powerful via Miller’s quiet, subtle prose.

They are two recently married couples, Eric and Irene Parry, and Bill and Rita Simmons living in the middle of the countryside in the west country. Eric is the village doctor, Irene a middle-class Londoner more used to a life of art galleries and literary discussions. Bill Simmons is a farmer, trying to make a go of his recently acquired smallholding with his recently acquired wife. His father is an Eastern European immigrant, vaguely connected to London gangland, who has tried to remove all traces of his origins, while Bill is trying to cut himself off from his family and set out on his own. His wife, Rita, a working-class girl who met Bill when working as an escort in a dodgy bar in Bristol is troubled by the voices she hears, left alone on the farm all day as Bill works all hours to try and make a success of what is likely to be a doomed venture. The two women, bored and lonely, become unlikely friends.

The stresses that Miller has rippling beneath the surface become heightened as the snow falls and an isolated community is even more cut off than before. everyone is confined to their own homes and the stifling conformity and boredom reaches a pitch.

Everything is set up for a drama centred on women being oppressed by conventional men, but one of the novels great strengths is its subtlety. There’s a lot more going on here than that. Each of the four characters is given equal weight – there are no victims, no baddies and goodies here. Miller manages to create sympathy for each of them.

It’s also, for all of its quiet understated subtlety, a book that, by the end, has been full of action. The difference here, though, is that in Miller’s hands, there’s not a whiff of melodrama over twists and turns that wouldn’t be out of place in a soap opera. The plot developments are all the stronger, and more impactful, because he turns the volume down. It’s an object lesson in getting the balance right: plot, character, ideas and language are complementary threads in a pleasing whole, producing a novel that continues to resonate long after the last page is turned. So, yes, there’s life in the old dog yet. Literary fiction can still prove its worth and relevance – just don’t diss the rest while you’re enjoying it.

Review of A Cold Wind Blows

“In an era where young adults face increasingly complex social and political realities, Barron has written a book that offers both an absorbing escape and a compelling message.“

The first reviews are beginning to come in. This one is from Maria Ashford of Bookshelfie

The middle volume of a fantasy trilogy faces a particular challenge: it must advance the story without feeling like mere connective tissue between a promising beginning and a climactic end. This is the case in retired English teacher R.J. Barron’s “A Cold Wind Blows”, the second installment in his Thomas Trelawney series. Though we haven’t read the first book, it feels like Barron largely succeeds in this difficult task, deepening both the mythology of his dual-world book while maintaining the accessible warmth that makes the series appealing to middle-grade readers.

To start off, readers should probably read the first book before this one, though a brief summary is helpfully provided for those who haven’t. The plot picks up when several months have passed since the events of The Watcher and The Friend, and thirteen-year-old Thomas has returned to the mundane challenges of school life in England. Meanwhile, in the parallel realm of Yngerlande, the political tensions that simmer beneath Queen Matilda’s rule are beginning to boil over. Princess Gaia—formerly Clara, a London orphan—undergoes intensive magical training under the guidance of Silas Cummerbund, developing abilities that grow more impressive by the day. As the spy Shrike observes with alarm, “She can move objects from afar without touching them. She can be in two places at once.”

In the same vein of C.S. Lewis, Barron’s greatest strength lies in his ability to ground fantastical elements in the recognizable experiences and emotions of young people. Princess Gaia’s magical education can be read as an extended metaphor for adolescent development—the awkward acquisition of maturity and the growing awareness of one’s place in a larger world. When Silas reassures her after a setback, saying “It’s much better than it was last week and ’twill be twice as good again next week,” we hear the voice of every patient teacher helping a student through difficulty.

The novel’s political dimension adds unexpected sophistication for adults to what might otherwise seem like standard fantasy fare. Queen Matilda’s egalitarian society—where “people of colour, women, people who go where their love takes them” enjoy full citizenship—faces threats from reactionary forces led by Oliver and Jacob, grandsons of the deposed king. Clara articulates the stakes plainly: “They want to turn back the clock.” This isn’t subtle allegory, but it doesn’t need to be. Barron writes with the moral clarity that young readers deserve, presenting complex social issues in terms they can understand and apply to their own world.

The book’s structure alternates between character moments and mounting suspense, and this gentle pacing largely works against dramatic momentum. Some of the most affecting passages involve Grace, Thomas’s sister, who now lives contentedly in Yngerlande but still carries the burden of separation from her family. “Of course, Silas. I am with the best of people here,” she says, “but still, I remember the life I had.” Where the novel occasionally stumbles is in its adherence to familiar fantasy tropes. These elements, while competently handled, may feel predictable to readers well-versed in the genre. Barron’s villains, particularly Oliver and Jacob, remain somewhat one-dimensional, their motivations never deeply explored beyond generic power-hunger and bigotry.

Yet these weaknesses don’t significantly diminish the book’s considerable pleasures, and young adult readers are unlikely to notice anyway. Barron writes with genuine affection for his characters, and their relationships feel relatable and fun to read despite the magical circumstances. The friendship between Grace, Gaia, Della, and Amelia provides moments of real warmth and humour, while the mentor-student dynamic between Silas and Gaia anchors the more fantastical elements. The novel builds to a cliffhanger that effectively sets up the trilogy’s conclusion.

To conclude, “A Cold Wind Blows” is a gripping read that succeeds as both fantasy adventure and coming-of-age story, offering young readers and older children heroes who face their challenges with courage. While it may not surprise experienced fantasy readers, it provides exactly what its intended audience needs. In an era where young adults face increasingly complex social and political realities, Barron has written a book that offers both an absorbing escape and a compelling message.

See if you agree with her. Buy A Cold Wind Blows here: https://t.co/n8wew492re

Ripeness by Sarah Moss

The sense of a whole life is given real substance by this technique, with the gaps and inconsistencies generating as much authenticity as the threads that clearly stretch unbroken through the fifty years that separate the two portrayals. What is the relationship between each of us and our younger selves? How much of our lives could have been predicted by the clues provided by our beginnings?

The book uses the two settings, 1960s Como and Ireland in the 2020s, to explore some weighty themes: Antisemitism and the fallout from the holocaust, refugees and immigration, what constitutes nationality and a sense of belonging, family bonds, conventionality versus bohemianism. All of it, though, is firmly rooted in character, relationships and drama. There are two major plot strands, but plot is not the narrative driver here.

It’s Moss’ gorgeous prose that drives the reader on. Well, this reader anyway. (although in the second half, there were a couple of occasions when I felt the reflective lyrical writing slowed the narrative down. I’m nitpicking, but hence the four stars, rather than 5). Beautiful descriptions of both the countryside around Como and small town/village life in the Republic are subtly blended with Edith’s reflections on first growing up and then getting old. Both are done brilliantly – her awkward, self conscious sense of being out of her depth in the artistic commune in Tuscany is as wonderful as her sense of self and certainty as an older single woman still grasping life with both hands. It’s a very compelling portrayal of that truth that one of the joys of later life is the liberation of not giving a toss what other people make of you, and doing it without being a boor or a reactionary old fart.

Honestly, this is a must read book. Beautiful and thought provoking.

A Cold Wind Blows – published on Friday May 30th

Book 2 in the Yngerlande Variations trilogy published by Burton Mayers books

The long awaited sequel to “The Watcher and The Friend” by R J Barron is published this Friday by Burton Mayers Books. “A Cold Wind Blows” is the second book in the trilogy, The Yngerlande Variations, set in the parallel world of Yngerlande in 1796. Here is the synopsis of the story so far. Warning! Spoiler Alert! Don’t read the summary if you have not yet read the first book and want to do so.

Tom has been summoned to help Silas and his allies defeat the relatives of the old King, Oliver and Jacob, who want to overthrow Queen Matilda and take the country back to a time when racism and discrimination were ever present. His task is made more complicated by the fact that he discovers that his sister, Grace, is alive and well in Yngerlande and is living there as a reward for her service when she was the Friend of Yngerlande. After many adventures and dangerous scrapes, they succeed, and Queen Matilda maintains her rule of peace, love and equality.

In “The Watcher and The Friend”, the first book in the trilogy, thirteen-year-old Thomas Trelawney is spending Christmas at an old Rectory on the North Yorkshire coast. It is the family’s first holiday since the death of Tom’s sister Grace. Here, Tom discovers a portal to another world and travels through it to Yngerlande, in 1795, with his cousin, Dan. Yngerlande is a parallel world to England, but is a much more diverse, equal society.

He meets Silas Cummerbund, who is The Watcher, the mysterious character who guards the portal between the two worlds. He tells Tom that he is the new Friend, the person whose role is to act as the link between the two worlds. This second book continues the story, as Oliver and Jacob return with another attempt to take back the crown of Yngerlande, only this time they are more dangerous and better prepared.

Silas has spent the summer training Princess Gaia, aka Clara to use her magic powers to their full extent, to be ready for any further threats to Yngerlande, but they are taken by surprise by the boldness of Oliver and Jacob’s new plan. A mysterious new character, Shrike, is introduced. He is by turns charming, dangerous, and duplicitous. Whose side is he really on? Even by the end of the book, that question is not clearly answered. One thing is certain, however. Thomas Trelawney is recalled from England to Yngerlande when everything looks lost. He does not trust Shrike, not least because Grace has fallen in love with him. Does Shrike have feelings for her, or is he just playing a clever game for his own ends?

“A Cold Wind Blows” begins eight months later.

The story takes in the wild North York Moors, Runswick Bay, Mulgrave Hall, the crumbling ruins of Hard Crag Towers, with its menagerie of bats, steedwings and owls, and the ancient city of York. It’s full of adventure, peppered with cross dressing, betrayal, vengeance, disguise and murder, with a liberal sprinkling of romance, friendship and love.

This is a must-read YA adventure, that is aimed at everyone from 9 to 90 who loves Fantasy novels. It’s available from the following links:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=a+cold+wind+blows+r+j+barron&crid=H08N4ZNJ851M&sprefix=a+cold+wind+blows+r+j+barron%2Caps%2C176&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-cold-wind-blows/r-j-barron/9781917224116

https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Barron-R-J/A-Cold-Wind-Blows/9781917224116

To buy Book 1, The Watcher and The Friend, use these links. Please note: the Amazon link gives you a free preview, but shows the old cover

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-watcher-and-the-friend/r-j-barron/9781838345921

Isla by Jim Pollard – A Review

This novel should be number one on your summer reading list this year

Isla, the new novel from award winning writer, Jim Pollard, is a real treat. It tells the story of Isla Shaw, a student in London in 1983, taking us through the formative events of her life up until 2018. She shuttles between London and Paris between those years, in pursuit of jobs, relationships and some sense of meaning and contentment. It’s an intricate portrayal of a life as a series of seemingly random yet connected scenes, with twists and turns resulting from decisions taken or not. There’s no smooth character arc here. Stuff happens and Isla deals with it, sometimes well, sometimes disastrously, but always with a sense of being true to herself.

The random nature of life is emphasised by Pollard’s clever use of structure. After a fairly conventional linear opening, the story splinters into pieces taken from the immediate future and the medium-term future. The reader is left to do a lot of work reconstructing events, trying to ascribe cause and effect in the relationship between events. Occasionally the reader is given a banister to hold on to, when a chapter is headed by a date and a location, but you soon get used to not being able to rely on that every time.

The book is set up to deliver a story of how someone can recover from a devastating event in her life, charting her progress through the aftermath, but then, without warning, it does a somersault and shifts into detective mystery territory. The shift comes out of the blue, and revitalises the narrative drive of the story.

There are many notable pleasures in the novel. The evocation of Paris seen from the perspective of a damaged newcomer, grappling with a change of culture and language is very well realised. The atmosphere of Parisian cafe culture, both glossy and a little more alternative, is seductively rendered, leaving one scouring the internet planning your next Eurostar trip.

The same is true of the character’s reflections on life and love. Because of the first person narrative, most of these reflective passages are Isla’s reactions to the events as they happen to her. Pollard takes a risk with this. In a lesser writer’s hands, they would degenerate into discursive rambling that actively dilutes the forward momentum of the plot, but Pollard manages the balance between action and thought superbly well.

This is partly achieved by the empathy he has created for Isla. We are interested in her thoughts about the world, both her own little world and her relationships, and the wider world of politics and events. From the beginning, her’s is a completely believable, authentic voice that both changes over time as life batters her and essentially remains the same. In that, and in so many other aspects of the book, the writing is wise and insightful. Isla’s journey, via therapy and relationships, with detours into the cul de sacs of drink and drugs, champions the notion of the value of a life examined. “Talking about it” emerges as one of the few reliable routes to stability and contentment. And not even that provides guarantees.

A lovely book, more than worthy of your time this summer. Available in bookshops and online including Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Isla-Jim-Pollard/dp/0995656304 ) but it’s easier and quicker to buy direct from the distributor at: notonlywords.co.uk/isla

Buy it, read it, and spread the word.