Andrew Miller - The Land in Winter (2025)

The Land in Winter explores two young couples over the harsh winter of 1962-63 in the UK. It is more of a character novel than a plot novel, although mostly I would describe it as a novel that explores post war society and lingering family trauma. This winter was historically cold, with huge amount of snow which caused shortages of services and uncertainty, closed roads, less supply in the village shop, cows stop giving milk etc, no news come through, which makes for a great oppressive atmosphere. 

I liked the novel, but I expected a different, more resolving ending or more evolution of the characters, which is kind of a big caveat. I think Andrew Miller is a great writer and the novel is definitely worth reading, but it is not for everyone. I have seen many bad reviews, some good ones. The bad ones all said the book was boring and depressing. Well, depressing it is, that's kind of the point of you study trauma or war impact on ordinary people. As for boring, I don't agree, I read it in 4 days and for me that's very fast, the short chapters, alternating the 4 people who form the two couples is quite engaging. You see what's going on with the countryside's doctor and then you see what kind of day the young man who bought the farm across the field is having, then you get to the doctor's wife , then to the farmers wife. They also meet. The good reviews point out how interesting it was to see how lost and fragile the men and women really were in their adulthood, and how they have survived the war but don't really know where to go from there, the war experiences are up their youth and it seems affected the relationship with their parents as well. There's a lot of insecurities around "how a man should behave" and be strong, make money and control the wife and a lot of "how a woman should behave", as the culture is definitely changing, it always does, and the young question the traditional roles to an extent, but they can't resolve the questions that burn in them, maybe not even name them. What really drives you crazy as a reader is the constant smoking and drinking. The characters consume far more tabak and alcohol than normal food, and both of the women are pregnant. I think that is driving the psychological tension up, for us 21st century readership. 

Miranda July - All fours (2024)

"Everyone thinks doggy style is so vulnerable,” Jordi said, “but it’s actually the most stable position. Like a table. It’s hard to be knocked down when you’re on all fours.”

Miranda July – 

This is an unusual novel, it's about desire, artistic and emotional freedom, deep relationships, ageing and modern family life.

I very much liked it, I loved parts of it, but I  kind of didn't love the whole. I think it is an important novel. The title gives the idea that it is a sex novel, but it explores way more.

The main character is a woman in the second half of her forties. She is married to Harris, a nice, reliable guy, with whom she has a non binary child. She is a medium successful/known artist and Harris is in the music business, they have a nice home and don't have to work crazy hours.

She is trying to manage family life and keep pursuing her interests in arts, performance and beauty in her garage studio. We don't really get to know a lot about her artistic projects, but she has an agent and gets appointments with pop stars in the arts and performance world.

She has a work trip to NY coming up and randomly decides to drive from LA instead of flying. She thinks about enjoying this time away from family life, have an adventure. She loves her family over everything but knows that her work is essential for her mental health, allowing her to be a better mother.

Harris, her husband comes up with Drivers and Parkers as a metaphor for people who either are very stable and reliable but kind of boring or very good in special, but exceptional, precise or creative tasks. Clearly he is a Driver and she a Parker. I liked this thought experiment.

"Well, in life there are Parkers and there are Drivers,” he began. “Drivers are able to maintain awareness and engagement even when life is boring. They don’t need applause for every little thing—they can get joy from petting a dog or hanging out with their kid and that’s enough. This kind of person can do cross-country drives

Parkers, on the other hand”—and he looked at me—“need a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus and for which they might receive applause. ‘Bravo,’ someone might say after they fit the car into an especially tight spot"

She goes for her Drive but ends up having a Parking experience. So she ends up staying in Monrovia, in a cheap motel, half an hour drive from home in LA, where she spontaneously refurbishes the room in ancient French decor, with 20 000 dollars she just earned. 

She meets this young man called Davey, who is the reason she stopped her trip. He works at a Hertz auto rental but is a passionate dancer.

She falls in love head over heals with him, they seem to be soulmates, he knows who she is. He too, is married, so they do everything together except having sex. Knowing that eventually they have to separate, they spent every day as if it was the last.

The best of all in this story is the protagonist's best friend Jordi who is always there, available, and with the right words of advice. 

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When she goes back to her family she doesn't tell them she didn't go to NY. Readapting to family life is hard for her, she even records a dancing performance for Davey and puts it on Instagram, but he doesn't respond.

She then randomly finds out she is perimenopausal, which makes her Google her symptoms and thinking about how to manage this new epoch in her life. She starts to work out and take care of her body, always thinking about Davey. It troubles her that she doesn't have this romantic exaltation with her husband, because she loves him very deeply especially as they went through the severe health issues of their newborn together, but it is a different kind of love. The childbirth trauma left her with serious flashbacks which come up even years later.

After very much debating with herself she feels she needs fill in the need for living out her sexual desires before hormones and libido vanish. For her mental and physical health and peace of mind. She then happens to find a female lover who kind of also meets that need.

You could say she has three key sexual experiences before starting to come to term with this crisis the perimenopause caused to her. She comes to an arrangement with her husband who get himself a lover as well, they affirm to each other to keep married and even talk to their child about their new special friends. 

The novel clearly has some autobiographic elements, Miranda July's best friend is a sculptor as Jordi in the book. She has a non binary child. She is a filmmaker, author and performance artist. I think I will read more by her even though I feel I'm a very different kind of person, more of the Driver's kind, not at all interested in dancing or fancy designer pop stars.

Somehow spoons are a recurring symbol of taking care of someone, in this novel. 

I think it's cool how contemporary novels treat modern marriages, normalizing separate bedrooms and having partner to raise the child and lovers on the side. And yes, even in 2025 female desire and menopause are not enough talked about publicly. 

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Ultimately, there's not so much an ending or a closure to the novel, although she does come to manage her symptoms and emotions with the right conversations with her woman friends who are going through the same. A couple of years later she even meets Davey again.

It's a smart novel. I personally think I would have liked it more if we would have known more about her work. She comes over as a but posh. But I definitely can imagine being in her shoes and feel the tension that built up and the emotional and moral dilemma.

Claire Keegan - Foster (2010)

 

Foster is a short novella, which can be read in one sitting, almost like a short story, set in rural Ireland some decades ago. The writer Claire Keegan has become more internationally known as the author of the novel Small things like these. In Foster she picks up a similar topic, that of children rejected by their families for one reason or another, and fostered by grand-hearted others, it is very moving.

She writes this immersive fiction that in very few pages makes it possible for the reader to be there, to see and smell and hear the story. Foster is written from a child's perspective. The girl is send to spend the summer with a better-off family, the Kinsellas, while her mother gives birth to another sibling. It is not clear if they are related as her aunt and uncle or not.

While in the beginning everything is a bit strange for her. No one tells her exactly how long she is going to stay there, if she has to work, or if there are other children. The bathwater is as hot as she has never had it, people come over at night to play cards and laugh. She just tries to behave her best, but soon she settles in and develops a very special relation with the foster Dad and also with the foster Mom, they cook together, buy clothes, go fetch the post, walk on the beach and generally respect each other.

She soon discovers the secret of the family which is not so much a secret but a tragedy they kept from her in the beginning, which is that the Kinsellas have lost their own son in a terrible accident which explains the children's clothes and wallpapers in her room. In the end of the summer she has to say goodbye and return home for a new school year, probably keeping what happened at the Kinsellas a secret to her own family, it would be difficult to put in words.

The great thing about the novel is as I said, the social and emotional atmosphere which soaks you in, you can see the neighbours gossiping, imagine walking down the fields to the well, or pulling the vegetables out of the garden beds.

Ottessa Moshfegh - My year of rest and relaxation (2018)

castellano abajo

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In the year 2000, New York City, in a flat on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, a 20 something year old woman decides to sleep during one entire year, only waking up every couple of days for basic self maintenance as eating and washing herself. With the help of sleeping pills she gets from a crazy psychiatrist she pulls through with her plan, but not without some side effect. First person narrator takes us with her while she wakes up, a couple of days after falling asleep, usually with evidence in her house that she has been sleepwalking, going to parties, shopping, etc.. When awake she binge watches movies, her favourite ones featuring actress Whoopi Goldberg.

Evidently in a position of privilege, the narrator without name, has enough money to sustain herself for a whole year without working. She is conscientious about this, she refers to herself as a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant; traditionally privileged group of population), but she doesn't care about it, nor does she care about anything in the world. She studied history of modern art at Columbia and worked for some time at a popular contemporary art gallery, a world which she despises, until she is asked to leave because she starts sleeping at work.

It's a fun read, although I would not say I had missed anything if I hadn't picked it up. The kind of book one would want to read at the dentist's, for example, when you just can't concentrate on something serious or profound, but need to get distracted and laugh a bit.

The protagonist is an anti-heroine, who never wanted to sleep away a problem? And then she is so selfish and superficial it can only be laughed at. I think the novel only “works” because it is full of dark humour, beginning with the title. The shrink she finds for her is another crazy figure, a weird cat lady who just gives her more and more pills as she complains about persisting insomnia in her consulting room once a month.

Why does our girl decide to hibernate like this? She is obviously depressed, her parents died, but it could be she was already depressed before. She does not seem capable of having emotions or empathy towards her close ones. These are serious topics, alienation disconnection, disenchantment, trauma, social reproduction, we learn a bit about her upbringing and her current life, but we don't get to explore those problems really closely.

My year of rest and relaxation can seem a depressing novel to some readers, because all social relations are deeply dysfunctional or straight forward abusive, for example, the relationship with her on/off boyfriend Trevor is disturbing, as both partners are relentless egoists. But also with her best and only friend, Reva. She is actually a quite normal girl, described as superficial, interested only in fashion and beauty and calorie counting, but we know this through the eyes of our selfish narrator, so we can be mislead here, Reva certainly has some body image issues. She is there taking care of our main character while she sleeps.

What I didn't like was the ending, it was largely foreseeable. (I won't spoiler it but I say as much as it takes place in the year 2001.). While not as entertaining as I would have liked, especially towards the end, it reads quickly and, overall, is entertaining enough.

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En el año 2000, en Nueva York, una chica veinteañera está deprimida y decide dormir durante un año con la ayuda de varios medicamentos. 

Me divertí, es para mi un libro que sirve de entretenimiento, en el lado leve de las cosas, como mirar una série que nos gusta más o menos, ló suficiente para no pensar que estamos perdiendo nuestro tiempo. Discute temas serios como trauma, depresión, reproducción social, pero con una especie de humor negro o sarcasmo.

Creo que la novela solo funciona porque está llena de humor, la protagonista es un anti héroe, ella es sarcástica, piensa que todo es una mierda, el mundo del arte moderno, en el que trabaja, sobretodo. 

Sonámbula y hace cosas de los que no se acuerda en absoluto. Por ejemplo se despierta tres días después de haberse dormido y descubre que hay fotos de ella tomados en un club de noche. 

Obviamente es una novela sobre privilegio, porque ella tiene dinero suficiente para no trabajar durante un año. Ella es consciente de que es WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Además esta convencida de ser muy bonita, sin tener que hacer nada por ello. En contraste su mejor y única amiga Reva lucha para mantenerse financieramente y tiene complejos de su aspecto físico.

La protagonista sin nombre, estudió historia del arte y trabajó brevemente en una galería de arte moderno hasta ser despedido por dormir en el trabajo y negligenciar sus tareas en general.

Tiene un novio, Trevor, con quién tiene una relación disfuncional, o mejor dicho, él es tan egoísta como ella.  

Con su mejor y única amiga, Reva, la relación también es disfuncional, pero ella no es egoísta , por el contrario, ella es la única que cuida a la protagonista cuando esta duerme. La protagonista que no parece ser capaz de tener afecto para nadie, por la manera que sus padres la educaron abusa un poco de la gentileza de Reva. 

Me aburren los libros en los que la hija es casi la exacta copia de la madre, encima dándose cuenta.

El final me pareció previsible.