2026 Meeting Notes

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The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

Meeting on Tuesday, 21st April 2026

Notes by Fiona

Eleven members (three apologies) met in the garden room at the Alexandra Arms public house. It was a lovely sunny day but there was a chilly breeze.

Since the paperback edition of The Artist is not until 28th May, at the March meeting we decided to move the discussion of this book to July and move The Colonel and the Eunuch to the May meeting. We had an email vote after the March meeting for the next books to discuss in June and August.

The books for discussion are as follows:

Tuesday, 19th May 2026 The Colonel and the Eunuch by Mai Jia (Irene)

Richard will lead and Fiona will take the notes for this meeting

Tuesday, 16th June 2026 Flashlight by Susan Choi (Kevin)

Tuesday, 21st July 2026 The Artist by Lucy Steeds (Alison)

Tuesday, 18th August 2026 Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar (Irene)

The following books are now on our Passed Over Books list as they have been through three rounds of voting:

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire by Henry Gee

The Safekeep by Yale van Dee Wouden

Apologies have been given for the following meetings:

May 2026: Kevin and Paola

June 2026: Fiona and Richard

September 2026: Anne

Irene had nominated the book and very kindly lead the meeting. Fiona has taken the notes.

VOTING (eleven in person and three by email)

8 x 2

7 x 4

6 x 6

5 x 2

Average 6.43

Goodreads 3.3

Amazon 3.8

LITERARY AWARDS

Booker Prize shortlist 2025

AUTHOR

Ben Markovits was born in 1973, in California and grew up in Texas. He studied at Yale University and the University of Oxford. After college, he played professional basketball in Germany.

Markovits has written several novels, among them a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron. He was selected as one of the best Young British Novelists by Granta Magazine in 2013. His novel, ‘You Don’t Have To Live Like This’ won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction in 2016.

Markovits lives in London, where he teaches creative writing at University College London. He is married with a son and daughter.

In 2022-23, Ben Markovits had the same cancer he gave to his main character, Tom. There were two versions of the book, in the first version Tom was going to leave his wife. After Markovits survived his cancer treatment, he rewrote the ending of the novel so that Tom stays with his wife and family.

SYNOPSIS

What's left when your kids grow up and leave home?

When Tom Layward's wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact, and keeps driving West.

He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he's been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class - something he hasn't yet told his wife.

So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past - an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son - on route, maybe, to his father's grave in California.

An unforgettable road trip novel, The Rest of Our Lives beautifully explores the nuance and complications of a long term marriage.

It is a book about middle age, marriage and regret.

GROUP DISCUSSIONS

Known as the weakest book for the Booker Prize 2025 – BookTube reviewers were surprised it had made it to the shortlist.

It is an easy-to-read book with a fluent conversational style and clear prose but it is also a bit meandering and random. There was a gradual reveal of the issues in the book but a lack of communication between the characters. For some it was a worthwhile read and would probably develop on a second read. Others didn’t enjoy it and were disappointed with the story and annoyed with the characters. It was difficult to identify with anyone or anything in the story. Some readers did like the dynamics and complexities within the family. It is a little unusual to read a first person narrative. There were a lot of characters but there was no interest in their biographies. It was a bit of a depressing read.

It is a character driven narrative and very emotionally intelligent. The author enjoys writing mundane realism. It was difficult to say it was well written but in parts it was very good, especially in the hospital scene but that may have been because it was an experience the author had in his own life. There were whole passages of narrative description when on the road which didn’t engage some of the readers, though others found those parts quite enjoyable. Snippets of the book were effective and it had the potential to be a good novel. It kicked off okay but lacked cohesion to make it a memorable story.

The cover of the Faber & Faber edition looks like a ‘Richard and Judy Book Club’ book.

It was difficult to see where the story was going and the ending was very sudden. For some readers, the ending didn’t resolve satisfactorily. Does Tom reconcile with Amy or does she nurse Tom through his illness then leave him and remarries! Perhaps it would be too mundane to resolve an ending to the story. For others, they quite enjoyed the ambiguous ending. There is also a great reconciliation, especially with Michael and Tom becoming closer following Tom’s diagnosis.

Tom has come to a crisis point in his life. He thinks about the decisions he has made in the past which have brought him to where he is now, so he takes a journey but doesn’t get very far. In a way, we all just move through life one step at a time, one foot in front of the other.

Does the author use Tom as a way of treating issues in his own life? It was a struggle to differentiate between the character of Tom and the author. It is very autobiographical as it appears there is a lot of Markovits’ life in the book. It is difficult to know what the author was trying to achieve with the book. Is he writing about his own experiences rather than a novel about other people’s experiences. In a way, the author is trying to write an autobiography but doesn’t know how to put life into the main character as we rarely see inside Tom’s head.

Tom is a complex but dissatisfactory and unlikeable character, he keeps everything to himself. He is not an admirable person and in some ways he is quite damaged. He is a very passive and negative character and has a low opinion about himself. He is also interesting and quite flawed. A personal failure. Some readers felt the need to want to take Tom and shake him. A realistic character but frustrating especially from not dealing what is in front of him: his health and his marriage. He is a weak man: not a hero and not a villain.

Tom doesn’t discuss his marriage nor his work with Amy. He is having a midlife crisis and is in denial about his health, marriage and work problems. He has harboured a grievance for over ten years following his wife’s affair and has found his marriage difficult. He doesn’t recognise his own faults nor seems to fully acknowledge his responsibility in his marriage. Tom blames Amy for the affair but she wouldn’t have needed something from someone else if he had shown he cared about her. Amy seems to love Tom and rather than live with a lie she told him about the affair and her pregnancy. She asked him to stay for the children which he does and so he didn’t need to make a decision about leaving. Tom seems to be someone who has chosen the easy life rather than chased and worked harder for a better career or worked on his marriage. Most of the group were frustrated with Tom and Amy not dealing with the affair. They need to discuss their relationship and forgive and move on.

Amy is a very strong, 3-dimensional character. She wants to live her life through Miriam and tries to encourage her to stay with Jim as he is off to Harvard.. For many years, Amy had wanted a third child but Tom had said no. When she found out she was pregnant from the affair she knew she had to tell Tom as she would have wanted to keep the baby, it would have been difficult for a marriage to recover from that situation. Tom couldn’t forgive Amy for this but neither would he talk about it.

Some of the group were annoyed with the lack of Tom’s reaction to his symptoms, especially as they are repeated throughout the book. Nor did they like how the illness was dealt with. What was the issue with Tom’s healthcare: denial of the symptoms or the frustrations with private healthcare in the USA?

Tom feels the need to travel across the states to visit an ex-girlfriend to see if she was the one-who-got-away. He thinks about Jill and what his life might have been compared to what it is now. Did he make the right choices for his life? Jill seems happy with the choices she made.

The book discusses wokeism, racism and white privilege. Being blind to micro-aggressions especially about race and being on the wrong side of history. The conversation between Tom and Todd felt very uncomfortable.

‘He wore a grey T-shirt that said PROVE ME WRONG on the back. The front said KOBE WAS A RAPIST in bright red letters. I didn’t want to be there.’

‘Amy said, “Tom loves to stand up for racists. He teaches a whole class on it.” [Tom]“That’s not really true. I teach a class on hate crime.” Michael gave me a look, but I shook my head.’

We discussed whether men have to make all the decisions. Do they have to be leaders all the time? Men in society: would they help a lady who had fallen and broken her collarbone?

It is a very American book although it was published in the UK a few months before the US. There were some characters mentioned in the book which Americans may have recognised but as a Cambridge reading group we were not able to understand the meaning behind them. It was also about the American class system with Amy being a Jewish princess and Tom from a lower middle-class family of professors. Tom is aware of his status and other people’s perspective of him. The subtle insults and snobbery, such as when Tom has to borrow a jacket for a restaurant.

There was too much about basketball. The basketball terminology meant nothing to most of the group and some skimmed over these parts in the book.

A google search on the meaning of ‘pick-up basketball’ states that it is an informal game played by individuals who gather at parks, gyms, or driveways. Games are self-officiated, relying on players to call their own fouls and violations. Teams are formed spontaneously, often by selecting players from those present. It is an informal game and is focused on fun and exercise rather than formal competition.

Suggested further reading:

“All Fours” by Miranda July

An irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious, and surprising novel about a woman upending her life.

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey

The Rest of Our Lives has been described as a male version of All Fours (although those that had read both felt All Fours was a better book).

EMAIL REVIEWS (edited):

I enjoyed The Rest of Our Lives the first time I read it which was some time ago. Looking at it again I found it less engaging. However, I do think it is a good book. The relationships within the family and the tracking of Tom’s self-awareness is well written. There’s a kind of understatement in the language which I liked. I found the end very touching. I think I would read something else by this author.

I read it quickly but I’m afraid found it unremarkable – I felt I was keeping him company through his journey – but couldn’t get anything much out of it.

I thought it was refreshing to get the take of a middle-aged, middle-class white American guy which sounds really odd to write but their voice has been missing especially when talking about relationships and marriage, and to a small extent, when discussing race and diversity. We can see he is an open-minded character who is both curious and appalled at what some of his counterparts are coming out with: Brian, Todd... The alleged bullying of white professional basketball players is dealt with incredibly tactfully in the narrative. We all know that this is not the period of time when these can be reasonably addressed and the morality of this direction is left to the reader's pondering. In the background, the younger generation's view of things is represented by Tom's children who vehemently take the view that the 'angry, white male' is still prevalent.

Meanwhile class issues are dealt with regarding his marriage to Amy Naftali and his relationship with his son, Michael, where there seems to be role reversal a lot of the time. We can see that he is tired of his wife's subtle snobbery and her self-indulgence, particularly when it comes to the raising of their daughter, Miri, and the questionable standards regarding how Miri should present herself to the world. Further, he is still angry about her affair (another self-indulgence of Amy's seems to be offloading this onto Tom) and the road trip to explore his identity outside of his marriage is due. The "midlife crisis" version of 'On The Road' comes to a standstill when Tom has to suddenly face a cancer diagnosis. It was a staccato at the end of the flowing roads and shifting landscapes and even has a bit of a black comedy feel in the way it was dealt with. Tom had a wry way of putting things sometimes and was always very matter of fact. The way he deals with cancer and the treatment felt very grounding and real although I do not know first-hand what this is like... I know for sure that his treatment was far quicker than it would have been on the NHS!

Aside from this, Markovits' continuous prose without chapters felt a little laborious at times and I would have liked it to be broken up a bit so I knew when to stop and go to sleep! However, I did enjoy his voice and it felt like good company especially as a parent and someone looking ahead to having a teenage child. Also it was really interesting to find out more about basketball, a sport I would have loved to have played more when I was younger. In the end, it was a novel partly about pick-up basketball. Tom's objective is somewhat achieved.

NEXT BOOKS FOR DISCUSSION

Tuesday, 19th May 2026 The Colonel and the Eunuch by Mai Jia (Irene)

Tuesday, 16th June 2026 Flashlight by Susan Choi (Kevin)

Tuesday, 21st July 2026 The Artist by Lucy Steeds (Alison)

Tuesday, 18th August 2026 Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar (Irene)

BOOKS ON THE SUGGESTIONS LIST

New books yet to go through a round of voting/new suggestions:

No new suggestions

Books which have survived one round of voting:

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (suggested by Irene 18.03.26)

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan (suggested by Fiona 18.03.26)

Flesh by David Szalay (suggested by Fiona 18.03.26)

Book which has survived two rounds of voting:

Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Love, Shipwreck and Survival (published in the USA as A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst (suggested by Irene 19.01.26)

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Olive, Again

by Elizabeth Strout

Notes by Fiona

Meeting on Tuesday, 17th March 2026

Twelve members (one apology) met in the garden room at the Alexandra Arms public house. It was a lovely sunny day with the beginning of spring in the air.

Since the paperback edition of The Artist is not until 28th May, we decided to move the discussion of this book to July and move The Colonel and the Eunuch to the May meeting.

The new dates for books for discussion are as follows:

Tuesday, 21st April 2026 The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (Irene)

Tuesday, 19th May 2026 The Colonel and the Eunuch by Mai Jai (Irene)

Tuesday, 16th June 2026 Flashlight by Susan Choi (Kevin)

Tuesday, 21st July 2026 The Artist by Lucy Steeds (Alison)

Tuesday, 18th August 2026 Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Irene)

Anne had nominated the book and very kindly lead the meeting.

VOTING (twelve in person and two by email)

10 x 2

9.5 x 1

9 x 4

8 x 6

7 x 1

Average 8.61

Goodreads 4.13

Amazon 4.5

LITERARY AWARDS

Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction (2019)

Barnes & Noble Book of the Year Award (2019)

Oprah’s Book Club pick

AUTHOR

Elizabeth Strout was born in January 1956 and was raised in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire. Her experiences in her youth have served as inspiration for her novels. After graduating from Bates College in Maine, Strout spent a year in Oxford (UK) followed by studies at law school for another year. In 1982, she graduated with honours, and received a Doctor of Law degree from Syracuse University College of Law. While teaching part-time, she spent six or seven years to complete her first book Amy and Isabelle which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (2000) and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2000).

Strout’s novel, Olive Kitteridge, was her third book and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2009) and was a New York Times bestseller. It has also been adapted into a multi–Emmy Award winning mini-series. Olive Again is a sequel to Olive Kitteridge.

Strout is married to a former Maine Attorney General and her daughter, Zarina Shea, is a playwright.

“Ever since I was a kid on that dirt road, I think that the biggest compelling engine in me has been a desire to know what it feels like to be another person… as a result, I have watched and listened to people all the time. I am always trying to absorb the tiniest details that I can hear from them.”

SYNOPSIS

Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes – sometimes welcome, sometimes not – in her own existence and in those around her.

Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine – and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life.

GROUP DISCUSSIONS

A few of the members of the group had read other books by Elizabeth Strout and have enjoyed them. They also seemed to like Olive, Again more than those who haven’t read anything by the author before. Strout has treated Olive Kitteridge differently than her other books, there is no continuous narrative.

You have to read Olive Kitteridge to get the most out of this book. This sequel is an easier, less ‘bitty’, book than the first story and has a more rounded view of Olive.

Quite a few of Strout’s novels are interconnected with various characters coming and going throughout her stories.

The book is emotionally intelligent and has lovely writing with a fantastic story. It is easy to be drawn into each chapter. Gentle, light and carefree with some profound moments in it and has emotional depth. A melancholic book. Philosophical nuggets. Frustration with the book as it is without a story just snapshots of lives. Tackles difficult subjects in a light but not trivial way.

The book is a series of short stories showing how lives are unexpectedly interconnected. Although some readers would have preferred a continuous narrative. It touches on human behaviour from birth to death. Causes moments of self-reflection. There is no sweetness in the book. People’s lives and their backstories which no-one knows about. Moments of intimacy in ordinary people’s lives. Family relationships especially between parents and their children and how they are unable to understand each other. Strout understands families. Makes readers look at their own family relationships. Visiting families and the underlying tensions. Dealt with a lot of things that are not talked about.

The book describes how Olive felt inside and how she looks from the outside. How we feel on the inside and how we appear to the outside world. Lack of communication between people. Judgements about each other.

Olive Kitteridge is a teacher and sometimes teachers have an impact in their students’ lives.

We had a discussion about Olive:

Layered/complex

Harsh/abrasive/blunt/too much ‘in your face’

Prejudiced in her views of people but sometimes realises she has made a mistake

Empathetic

People confide in her

Touches people’s lives for the better

Tries to understand people

Doesn’t care what people think of her but also cares that no-one wants to speak to her

Asks direct questions

Goes to places most people don’t go

Over the top but is that how older people are like in the USA?

Incivility makes her angry

Judgemental but redeems herself (realises her faults)

She wants to be a loving person but finds it difficult as she is not demonstrative

Olive flips between Henry and Jack and her choosing between them

Nice to everyone but not nice at home

Who is the audience for this book? Is it for readers of 70 years plus? How to lead the next two decades of your life. Does it matter? Is it a woman’s book? Interesting to read a book with characters in their golden years of life.

Prostrate issues, incontinence, loneliness and death. Olive’s fall and not being able to get up again and her realisation that she will have to go to the old people’s home. People assume there is a rigidity in old age but Olive evolves and changes.

The description of Crosby Maine was lovely. It is so well described that you can picture being there. It seems a nice place. There are pictures of the town from other people’s points of view and not just Olive’s. It is a small town in America with all these characters within it and where everyone knows each other.

‘Godfrey’ instead of God forbid!

Indignity of ageing

Generational trauma

Love someone but not like or know them.

Life is short and should be enjoyed.

Never stop learning

It is about loneliness.

“I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.

Olive stuck her cane to the ground and hoisted herself up. It was time to get Isabelle for supper.”

EMAIL REVIEWS:

I have always enjoyed Elizabeth Strout’s novels and was looking forward to reading this book. However, it is more a collection of short stories than a novel and has to be appreciated as such. For quite a while I kept thinking: When will all the disparate stories come together? It wasn’t until the number of stories, and therefore characters, became so large and diverse that I realised that they weren’t going to.

The thread running through it is, of course, the aging of Olive, with its attendant problems of physical frailty, loss and grief, loneliness, and times of confusion, which result in a gradual development of a greater self-awareness in this sometimes diﬃcult and self-opinionated woman. These issues do provide the necessary ‘glue’. This is not to say that Olive doesn’t have many virtues as a character – she is forthright (and therefore upsets people), but people can talk to her, she is able to provide insights for others. I found many of the chapters full of interest, though in some of the earlier ones many of the less appealing aspects of human behaviour were highlighted. Consequently, at first I found the book rather depressing, but the quality of her writing meant that I was never disappointed and the later stages, when Olive is more of a central character, I really enjoyed, even though I hoped there would be more of a ‘pulling together’.

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My score for Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout is a perfect 10. What a writer. Thank you to Anne for suggesting it. My very brief and incredibly enthusiastic review (I *really* liked it) on Goodreads was entered as follows:

"Strout does it again! Speaking with devastating honesty and tenderness to the core of what makes us imperfectly human. Her writing is a tonic and gives me hope for the possibilities of tolerance and understanding of the human condition. Why not all of us try to be a little bit more Elizabeth Strout?"

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NEXT BOOKS FOR DISCUSSION

Tuesday, 21st April 2026 The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (Irene)

Tuesday, 19th May 2026 The Colonel and the Eunuch by Mai Jai (Irene)

Tuesday, 16th June 2026 NO BOOK!

Tuesday, 21st July 2026 The Artist by Lucy Steeds (Alison)

BOOKS ON THE SUGGESTIONS LIST

New books yet to go through a round of voting/new suggestions:

Flashlight by Susan Choi (suggested by Kevin 19.03.26)

Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar (suggested by Irene 18.03.26)

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (suggested by Irene 18.03.26)

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan (suggested by Fiona 18.03.26)

Flesh by David Szalay (suggested by Fiona 18.03.26)

Book which has survived one round of voting:

Books which have survived two rounds of voting:

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire by Henry Gee (suggested by Irene 15.10.25)

The Safekeep by Yale van Dee Wouden (suggested by Kevin 27.07.25)

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Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan

Notes by Fiona

Meeting on Tuesday, 17th February 2026

Twelve members (two apologies) met in the garden room at the Alexandra Arms public house. It was a chilly but sunny day.

It was lovely to invite Sarah back to the meeting.

We voted for the books to read for the spring:

5 votes for The Colonel and the Eunuch by Mai Jai

4 votes for Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst

7 votes for The Artist by Lucy Steeds

8 votes for The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

1 vote for The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire by Henry Gee

3 votes for The Safekeep by Yale van Dee Wouden

0 votes for Held by Anne Michaels

2 votes for Small Boat by Vincent Delacroix

Held will be removed from the suggestions list as it had zero votes and Small Boat will be removed as it has been through three rounds of voting.

Kevin had nominated the book and very kindly lead the meeting.

VOTING (twelve in person)

9 x 5

8 x 2

7 x 2

6 x 2

5 x 1

Average 7.67

Goodreads 3.78/5

Amazon 4.2/5

LITERARY AWARDS

Bestseller of 2024 in The Sunday Times, The Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, Independent, Scotsman and The New Yorker

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2024

Saltire Society Literary Award for Fiction Book of the Year 2024

Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2025

AUTHOR

Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968, of Irish Catholic descent. His mother was a school cleaner and his father worked as a joiner, and he had four elder brothers. His father was a violent alcoholic, and as a boy, Andrew would hide books from his father under his bed. He went to the University of Strathclyde being the first in his family to reach tertiary education. He earned his BA (honours) in English in 1990.

O’Hagan is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. Three of his novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize and he has won several awards.

His novel Mayflies (2020) won the Christopher Isherwood Prize, and was adapted into a two-part BBC television drama of the same name. O’Hagan was the executive producer of the TV adaptation.

SYNOPSIS

May 2021, London

Campbell Flynn – art historian and celebrity pundit – is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for controversy and novelty, he doesn’t take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes.

The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world. He has experiences and ideas that excite his teacher. He also has a plan.

Over the course of an incendiary year a web of secrets and crimes will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves. But then, he always knew: when his life came tumbling down it would occur in public.

See a list of characters at the end of these notes.

GROUP DISCUSSIONS

There were quite a few mixed reactions to the book. Some read half and then went back to finish the book at a later date. Quite a few hated it at the start but found they were drawn in as they read further into the book. If you prefer depth in a book rather than big epic scales, then this book is not for you. It was similar to reading a gossip column. Most of the group liked it by the end.

It is a very long book but it has a huge scope so the length is understandable. It is well written and has short pacy chapters. There can be some confusion while reading as there can be two different stories in a chapter. Andrew O’Hagan is a great investigative journalist and it is an admirable piece of work which has taken him 10 years to write. It is a very clever book (too clever by half) and there is obviously a depth of research. There are many philosophical takes which make the reader think. Some felt there isn’t anything new to learn from the book. In fact, in recent news some of the issues in the book have moved on. The situations are developed well in the book (and quickly!). At one point in the book, Milo and Gosia cannot decide what to watch on Netflix so watch 2 minutes of everything which is the same as this book. O’Hagan has done an amazing job of building a world. A tour-de-force!

It is a spiteful book (funny but cruel) and unfortunately not all the characters got their comeuppance. It is full of black humour especially at the start of the novel but that seems to disappear as the story develops into the darker parts

Vicky’s abuse and Tara’s need for a story. Very similar to Virginia Giuffre being brave enough to tell her story but not having the support behind her.

It is a convincing portrayal of societies in the UK. Real worlds which merge with fiction. It is a satire of the criminal worlds and classes. Throughout the book there are contrasts between these societies such as the party at Travis’s home and the party at the Duke’s house.

It includes the corruption in the upper classes (the Mandelson’s connections). It shows how society is built by people like the Duke of Kendal to protect people like him. It depicts crime and corruption well. The upper-class culture need for money and how they welcome the Chinese to launder money for their vanity projects. There were a lot of designer goods mentioned at the beginning of the book by Campbell but this tails off during the book.

Campbell Flynn is an interesting character. He is the only person who has an inner dialogue. There is a tension as to when he was going to fall apart. Campbell is naïve and so full of himself that he is taken in by Milo. It was surprising Campbell’s descent into violence. Campbell is not a stereotype as the others are, perhaps because he is stretched across all the classes since he was not born into money but through hard work and marriage has become linked to a Duke and the upper classes. We are able to observe the human condition through Campbell. Campbell is obviously expecting to be left some money by his mother-in-law.

Elizabeth and Campbell’s relationship is real and shows genuine love but Elizabeth (despite being a psychotherapist) is not able to stop Campbell’s descent into drink and drugs. Elizabeth is a sympathetic wife but she can be quite patronising towards Campbell and mothers him.

What is the meaning behind Campbell’s twelve words for his crypto currency: Townhead, Housecoat, Rabbit, Tulips, Peterhouse, Eagle, Lollipop, Needle, Bookshelves, Elizabeth, Hallway, Celestial?

Milo is another character who runs through the book. He sees himself as an avenging angel. He is prejudiced but thinks he is a good person. He pushes for a reset of society by the redistribution of wealth. Milo does not seem to help his old friends and his gift of trainers to Travis gets his friend sent to prison. The unintended consequences of other people’s actions.

Jakob is a sympathetic character but nothing goes his way. He seems to lose his moral compass in his attempt to get back into England from Poland and brings Robert with him. Jakob is used to get an emotional response from the readers despite the many Vietnamese people who also died in the lorry.

Quite a few enjoyed the antagonistic character of Mrs Voyles. A thorn in Campbell’s side.

In some ways Zak is only a result of his upbringing. Zak being part of Extinction Rebellion/Just Stop Oil but living in a multi-million pound apartment which were formerly gasworks.

Moira is the moral compass of the novel.

There were too many characters and nearly all were unpleasant. Everyone has a good and bad side so it was expected to have non-sympathetic characters. It was an interesting network of characters. Some felt there was more sympathy towards Campbell’s wife, Elizabeth, and her sister, and Gosia. However, even these characters are flawed. The characters are superficial without any depth. All the characters lives are interwoven with each other.

The truth is stranger than fiction.

Maybe a year ago it would have felt like satire but not at the moment with the current news cycle now it feels tame! Moral outrage but seems to quickly blow over with the next headline news.

The book shows life as one big grey area where people can do horrid things to each other. Where people are seen as commodities. How much do people get away with and blame others with excuses. Posh criminals who hide behind their charitable works.

All the characters are stereotypes: the upper classes, the black boys, the Polish. Why are we unhappy about the representation of certain stereotypes but seem to dismiss those of the white characters. They all serve a political view point.

Most of the book is about men messing up and the women on the sidelines watching the men mess up. It is about male vanity and the need to ‘save face’. It is about male friendships: Travis and Milo – Milo and Campbell – Campbell and William Byre. Fathers and sons and the old boys club networks. Some of the male characters have missing mothers (Campbell and Milo) and seem to be searching for something that is missing in their lives. Byre being in debt to the Russians and his company struggling for funds but still hires a private jet.

It has been referred to as Dickensian although his works were issued weekly in periodicals. Is it like Dickens as it has a huge cast of characters and very long or as a book about the life of contemporary Londoners? Even now, the book is no longer recent news. Will readers in the future look back at this book as we do at Dickens’s work and his comments on the state of life in London in the mid-2020s!

A few members of the group mentioned the chapter on fashion, which they had no interest in but that follows onto the people who work in sweatshops to create the ‘fast fashion’.

Some of the book club had lived near Caledonian Road and had a lovely discussion about life there before the redevelopment of Kings Cross.

Which actors would play the various characters:

Campbell Flynn played by Bill Nighy

Elizabeth Flynn played by Juliet Stephenson

Emily (Barbara Cartland) played by Helen Mirren

Possible real-life people referred to in the book:

Philip Green – Sir William Byre (Arcadia Group – Angelique)

Zac Goldsmith – Zak Byre

Lord Scullion – Peter Mandelson

Suggested television shows:

Years and Years (Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Apple TV)

Tehran (Apple TV, Amazon Prime) suggested for its depiction of the dark web

(The Israeli producer, Dana Eden, best known for co-creating the Apple TV show Tehran, was found dead in her hotel room on Sunday, 15th February 2026 in Athens, where the fourth series was being filmed. Police say her death is being treated as a suicide).

Petersfield in known as the Islington of the East.

The audible version of the book is very good. It is read by Michael Abubakar and he uses different voices for the characters.

At the end of these notes is a review by David Robinson for Books from Scotland.

NEXT BOOKS FOR DISCUSSION

Tuesday, 17th March 2026 Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (Anne)

Tuesday, 21st April 2026 The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (Irene)

Tuesday, 19th May 2026 The Artist by Lucy Steeds (Alison)

Tuesday, 16th June 2026 The Colonel and the Eunuch by Mai Jai (Irene)

BOOKS ON THE SUGGESTIONS LIST

New books yet to go through a round of voting:

None

Book which has survived one round of voting:

Books which have survived two rounds of voting:

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire by Henry Gee (suggested by Irene 15.10.25)

The Safekeep by Yale van Dee Wouden (suggested by Kevin 27.07.25)

List of characters

The Flynn Family and Close Circle

•Campbell Flynn — Central protagonist; 52-year-old Scottish-born art historian, professor, celebrity academic, writer; lives in Thornhill Square, Islington; faces financial/moral downfall.

•Elizabeth Flynn — Campbell’s wife; therapist; often described as sane, steadfast, and insightful.

•Angus Flynn — Campbell and Elizabeth’s son; successful celebrity DJ.

•Kenzie Flynn — Campbell and Elizabeth’s daughter; former model seeking a simpler life.

•Moira Flynn — Campbell’s sister; Labour MP and lawyer focused on social issues.

•Mrs Voyles — Campbell’s elderly sitting tenant (protected/remnant of old Islington) in his basement; bitter, Dickensian crone figure.

•Jennifer Mearns — Academic colleague at the university; shrewish, climate-justice focused (e.g., anti-waste-paper-basket campaigner).

The Byre/Bykov Network (Business, Oligarchs, Corruption)

•Sir William Byre (or William Byre) — Campbell’s best friend; wealthy businessman/tycoon under investigation for corruption, dirty money, sweatshops; at risk of losing knighthood.

•Aleksandr Bykov (or Aleksander Bykov) — Powerful Russian oligarch; money laundering, influence-peddling in London.

•Yuri Bykov — Aleksandr’s son; preening playboy/dilettante involved in schemes.

•Zak Byre — William Byre’s son; privileged but involved in Extinction Rebellion/activism; divides time between luxury flat and protests.

•William Byre’s girlfriend, 23, Scottish — Young, naïve; tied to his scandals (mentioned in cast descriptions as a type).

The Duke of Kendal/Aristocratic Circle

•Anthony, Duke of Kendal (or the Duke of Kendal) — Campbell’s brother-in-law (married to his wife’s sister?); aristocrat with scandals, racist comments, dubious dealings.

•Candy — The Duke’s wife; Campbell’s sister-in-law; portrayed as fey, do-gooder type.

•The Duke of Kendal’s lawyer — Minor figure handling legal issues.

Milo Mangasha’s Circle (Activism, Hacking, Eastern European Ties)

•Milo Mangasha — Campbell’s student; computer science/hacker/activist; radical post-colonial thinker; central to disruptions/plot.

•Gosia — Milo’s Polish girlfriend; connects to Eastern European elements.

•Bozydar — Gosia’s brother; human trafficker, drug dealer, criminal/lynchpin figure; involved in sweatshops, drug farms.

•Jakub — Polish migrant worker; sympathetic, labor issues.

•Ghost — Drill rapper, aka; Milo’s old school friend from estates.

Journalists, Media, and Cultural Figures

•Tara Hastings — Investigative journalist probing corruption/connections (e.g., Byre, Bykov, Duke).

•Jake Hart-Davies — Actor who ghosts a book for Campbell; involved in self-help book scheme.

•Atticus — Campbell’s agent.

•Editor of The Commentator — Media figure (right-wing/notorious columnist types mentioned).

•Notorious columnist — Likely a satirical media personality.

Other Minor/Supporting/Peripheral Characters Mentioned

•Cecylia Krupa (or Mrs Krupa) — Polish churchgoer/immigrant; prays for better England; hypocritical views on immigration.

•Travis — Young guy; speaks in drill/estate slang (minor working-class figure).

•Archie Todd — Cokehead actor (mentioned in extract/context).

•Various unnamed or briefly referenced: Tory peers, Lords, MPs, gang members, migrants, factory workers, lorry drivers, hackers, do-gooders, climate activists, bystanders at knifings, etc.

Review from the Best of Scottish Books:
David Robinson Reviews

‘Who else, you might well ask, has the chutzpah and the talent to cover a waterfront as wide as this, to write with credibility about disgraced tycoons and people smugglers, sweatshops and culture wars, black gangs and white grandees?’

In this review of Caledonian Road, David Robinson explores Andrew O’Hagan’s journalism as an influence in his latest novel.

Caledonian Road
By Andrew O’Hagan
Published by Faber

The internet’s no help.  Type in ‘Andrew O’Hagan’ and ‘foot and mouth’ and ‘slaughtermen’ and ‘South Ayrshire’ and it gives an apologetic shrug, which I half-expected anyway: it was, after all, 2001 or some such distant, as yet undigitised date. The Word Festival in Aberdeen, at which O’Hagan gave a reading that left me lost in admiration, vanished into memory more than a decade ago, and the book he was reading from – The End of British Farming, republished from a long essay he wrote for The London Review of Books – has almost certainly followed it. 

What made such a deep impression on me wasn’t that essay but something else he read – a first-person newspaper feature about accompanying one of the killing teams slaughtering herds of cattle and sheep infected with foot and mouth disease which was, at the time, rampant. That year, six million beasts were killed, and the fires from the pyres of their carcasses blighted the countryside. Like everyone else, I knew this was happening, but it didn’t really register. And then O’Hagan read that piece about the animal holocaust going on around us and the human lives it was wrecking, and I felt, to my complete surprise, so moved by it that I can still remember it more than two decades on. 

Ever since then, I have known that whatever else he is as a writer, O’ Hagan is also a great journalist. My working definition of this is simple: someone who tells you stuff about your country that you don’t know is going on.  More than that, though, it also requires being able to bring a subject to life and realising that there’s life in practically every subject too. To that extent, O’Hagan  is very much like the father of the central character in his novel Be Near Me, who says that he only realised he was grown up ‘when I could read the local newspaper from cover to cover and find every item interesting.’

In one sense, his latest novel, the 641-page Caledonian Road, is a local newspaper: most of its characters live on or near the eponymous road that runs north for a mile from King’s Cross, or are closely connected with someone who does. But just one look at O’Hagan’s cast of characters, which range from dukes to gangsters, Russian oligarchs to bishops, human traffickers to jet-setting DJs, supermodels to sweatshop workers, tells you that it’s more of a national than a local publication. He is, finally, going the full Dickens: this is unambiguously a state-of-the nation novel. And the nation, at least in this portrait of it, from the end of Covid in May 2021 to Russian invasion of Ukraine, is in a hell of a state.  

Campbell Flynn, his central character, is a cultural commentator, a biographer of Vermeer who is now slumming it by writing – for heaps of  cash but on conditions of anonymity – a male self-help book called Why Men Weep in Cars. Would Flynn himself be the kind of man who would do that?  At the start of the book, no: he has a successful career as the host of a podcast called – with more than a nod to Freud – Culture and its Malcontents, as well as a visiting professorship in English at UCL, and a stack of freelance work, such as providing the words to help launch a fashion  collection and giving the prestigious Autumn Lecture at the British Museum. He has a house in Islington’s leafy Thornbury Square, is the brother-in-law of a duke, one of his best friends from Cambridge is a retail tycoon, his sister is a Labour MP, his son a jet-setting DJ and daughter a supermodel who looks like Linda Evangelista. All in all, it’s a long way away from his working-class childhood in a Glasgow high-rise.

It’s not giving too much away to say that by the end of the book, only a few of these apparently solid pillars of Establishment will remain standing. Flynn already has a half-suspicion that he is a middle-aged phoney, that the cultural world is moving out of his intellectual grasp, so when one of his brightest students, a half-Ethiopian, half-Irish computer whizz and cultural malcontent critiques his podcast, he listens. He learns too: about the inequalities his assumptions are based on, about how the internet is changing our minds and what we look for in art. What we need even more than the looted objects in the British Museum (largely founded, he points out, on the collection of  slave-owner and eugenist Sir Hans Sloane) is transparency: only when the treasures Britain took to burnish its own so-called civilisation have been returned will we be able to start afresh with a newer, better one. 

Yet while O’Hagan’s novel has plenty of room for such culture wars skirmishes, the real meat of the plot lies in its dissection of crime and corruption in both high and low places. For even though you’ll be able to find plenty solidly haut-bourgeois mansions such as Fynn’s just off Caledonian Road, the Vietnamese illegals crammed into flats in Paradise Park and Polish people-smugglers working the King’s Cross cashpoints with their victims’ credit cards aren’t too far away either. Only a revolutionary’s stone-throw away, we’ll find a plutocrat’s Extinction Rebellion-supporting son relaxing in his £7.5 million pad on (oh, the irony) Coal Drops Yard. Thirty years ago, somewhere like that was a seedy backwater. Now there’s Eurostar, the new Google offices, and UK headquarters of Expedia and Facebook. ‘It’s the centre of London now,’ Flynn points out.

And London itself? Well, if you’ve read Oliver Bullough’s 2022 book Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals you’ll get an idea  of the city O’Hagan’s novel portrays. It’s a place ridden with oligarchs’ money, with consequences for both art dealers (‘We paid $35 million too much for those Bacons’) and society at large (‘You know the Russians paid for Brexit, right?’ says an editor. ‘It was their money made the Tories believe London was invincible.’)

If absolute power corrupts, O’Hagan’s novel suggests, so too does the oligarchs’ absolute money. It props up the finances of stately homes, squeezes its way onto the balance sheets of our top businessmen, suborns politicians and influencers, and fuels jet-setters’ mad weekends to an Icelandic restaurant that’s ‘the only place in the world right now where you should eat Indian food.’ 

There are, in other words, so many worlds within this novel, and at the gaudier end (‘the last time Tara saw Bo he was sitting next to one of the young royals at a Rolex party thrown by Chinese Vogue at Sartorial’) they gleam with some of the madness that so attracts us to TV dramas like Succession. But there’s grime too, and it’s drawn equally realistically: an entirely credible Leicester sweatshop making garments for a disgraced tycoon, Vietnamese immigrants fleeing ecological disaster in their homeland freezing to death in a people smuggler’s lorry or working in Kent cannabis farms or black London gangs fighting a pointless turf war. 

A novel this big, this ambitious, is bound to attract detractors. Some of them will point out that, as a portrait of society it leaves out practically everything and everyone who isn’t involved in a glitzy career (fashion, media, aristocracy, showbiz) or a criminal one (crooked businessmen, cybercrime, drugs gangs, people smuggling). And yes, they’ll have a point, if a rather feeble one. True, the world isn’t entirely as glitzy or criminal as this, just as Thackeray’s Vanity Fair was hardly an entirely accurate portrait of 1847 Britain and there were few if any mid-Victorian women like Becky Sharpe. Satire is like that. It exaggerates, but it’s based on truth.

Finally, I’ll go back to 2001. If any other writer went around the South Ayrshire  countryside with the foot and mouth slaughtermen, I never got to read about it. It’s the same with Caledonian Road. Who else, you might well ask, has the chutzpah and the talent to cover a waterfront as wide as this, to write with credibility about disgraced tycoons and people smugglers, sweatshops and culture wars, black gangs and white grandees? But there’s even more to it than that. A good journalist isn’t just interested in all aspects of society, but knows something else too: how a story shakes down; how it grows from a hint to a rumour to an actual front-page exclusive, with all the consequences it then unleashes. A good journalist knows what a story looks like at every one of those stages. Which is why I’ll say it again: Andrew O’Hagan is a heck of a journalist. He is, of course, a brilliant writer too, as this enjoyable and thought-provoking novel proves once again, but by now I’m sure you know that already.

...

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

Notes by Fiona

Meeting on Tuesday, 20th January 2026

Our first meeting of the year and twelve members (one apology) met in the garden room at the Alexandra Arms public house. It was a chilly but sunny day.

Very sadly, Jill has left the book group. We had a discussion about whether to advertise for another member. Due to the current financial climate many pubs are closing during the day. If The Alex Arms should have to close when we have our meetings, we felt it would be easier to move venue as a smaller group. Also, we rarely have meetings with fewer than 10 members so always have a good number for discussions. Plus there is a vacancy for Sarah once she is able to return to meetings.

Mary had nominated the book and very kindly lead the meeting.

VOTING (twelve in person and two by email)

9 x 6

7 x 5

6 x 3

Average 7.64

Goodreads 3.78

Amazon 3.8

LITERARY AWARDS

Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025

Winner of the Winston Graham Prize for Historical Fiction 2025

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025

Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for October 2025

The judges of the Walter Scott Prize said the novel “painted big themes on a subtle canvas of tiny detail” and described its prose as being "as softly dazzling as the snow of the 1962-63 winter in which the novel is set". The 1962-63 setting fell just within the Prize's definition of "historical" as being at least sixty years earlier.

The novel was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, with the judges describing it a "dazzling chronicle of the human heart".

Miller described the process of writing the novel as liberating, because "I didn’t worry much about themes. As long as there was a good forward energy, I was happy just to follow it. One of my guiding intentions – a central one – was to let my four main characters have the freedom to see out their parts in whatever way was right for them. No one was going to be shoved around by plot."

AUTHOR

Andrew Miller (born in 1960) is an English novelist. He was born in Bristol and grew up in the West Country and has lived in Spain, Japan, Ireland and France. He gained a first class degree in English, completed an MA in creative writing and wrote a PhD in critical and creative writing.

For his first novel, Ingenious Pain, Miller received the James Tait Black Memorial Award for Fiction, the International Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy. He has also been shortlisted for a Whitbread Award, and a Costa Book Award for Best Novel and Book of the Year.

Miller currently lives in Witham Friary in Somerset with his daughter Frieda.

SYNOPSIS

The novel tells the story of two young married couples living in the West Country during the Big Freeze of 1963 – one of the coldest winters on record in the United Kingdom – with the narrative spanning December 1962 to February 1963.

Eric Parry is one of two GPs in the area and his wife, Irene, stays at home. Irene, originally from London, feels bored and out of place in the countryside.

Another young, married couple, Bill Simmons and his wife Rita, live on a nearby farm. They are new arrivals to the West Country. Bill bought the dairy farm rashly upon leaving Oxford University without a degree and is overwhelmed by and ill-prepared for his new role as a farmer. His wife, Rita, was a dancer in a club in Bristol and, like Irene, she also feels out of place in her new setting.

Both Rita and Irene are newly pregnant. Eric is cheating on his wife with Alison, his married patient.

The two couples hold a Boxing Day party in 1962. They invite friends and acquaintances, including Alison and her husband. The interactions between the characters reach a climax during the party; they become more drunk as it progresses, while outside, a large blizzard is forming.

GROUP DISCUSSIONS

This book gets better on a re-read.

The first chapter of the book is about the war and mental health. Although Martin Lee is not a main character both he and Stephen Storey are mentioned a few times through the book. It is quite a perplexing opening chapter.

The start of the book has long chapters introducing the four main characters, after which the chapters refer to two characters interacting with each other and then it speeds up with shorter chapters at the end. It is very realistic storytelling but in various parts of the book it has a fairytale setting. However, it has a very sudden ending without any conclusion to the story or what happens next. Does Eric go to Antarctica? Where does Irene go when she leaves the house in the spring? Quite a few people said they liked the first part of the book but found it less interesting in the later parts of the book. There is no major drama in the story, in fact, not much happens in the first part of the book, in contrast the second part is more action packed. There is a lot going on in the book but it is ephemeral. It is a picture of a moment in time. It is not action packed but so much happens.

The prose is amazing and the sentences flow like music. The book is very well written and many members of the group said they liked the way Andrew Miller writes. The similes are good although one or two stood out as a bit odd. There is a lot of meat to the quality of the writing but there is a lack of real drive and meaningful plot.

“The playwright, smoking one of Edward Strang’s cigars (he had gone for the Wills Whiffs rather than the larger Castellas), helped himself, and immediately got a dollop of cream on his jacket. He didn’t notice it. In the morning, Irene would find the end of his cigar in the ramekin. She would find one of the amaryllis in the downstairs loo, one of the dolmades under the sofa, two glasses almost buried on the lawn. One glass, which had found its way into the back garden, set down like an offering next to the crab-apple tree, she found in mid-March, a week after Eric had left, and shortly before she did too.”

“It was a place with peaked gables and arched windows that must, once, have stood on its own in the midst of tended grounds, but possessed now only a single cherry tree, like a slapped girl, at the corner of a concrete parking area.”

There is not enough about the landscape and farming in winter.

Quite a few people mentioned the Boxing Day party which they found quite boring. There was a lot of drinking and smoking cigarettes followed by driving home drunk. It seems that no-one wanted to be at the party but that social norms meant they had to be there. The party felt excruciating and there was the expectation that something might happen.

There is an underlying unease in the book. There are quite a few moments in the book when you feel uneasy about certain characters: Bill and his case of cash; Irene losing her way in the dark in the school; Rita falling asleep in front of the gas fire; and Eric and his affair with Alison.

The couples are in new marriages but they are fairly improbable relationships: Bill marries a showgirl and Eric has an affair very early on in his marriage. They don’t seem to talk to each or want to understand each other. Both marriages are problematic and they don’t communicate. Rita and Bill rub along fine but don’t know each other. Both the marriages are breaking down but they don’t seem to be aware of it, there is no shouting or ‘throwing of plates’. In the second half, each character goes off into their individual lives. That nothing much happens in the book is a reflection of the characters frozen relationships, nothing is moving fast, they are all submerged in ice. A snapshot of lonely people.

There are glimpses of other lives such as Gabby but we don’t know how he came to be working as a GP in England. Also, the life of Alison and her marriage to Frank, was he an abusive husband?

When Rita and Bill go to London you are aware the remains of the war are everywhere.

Fathers appear to be very important in the story. What does it mean to disappoint a father? None of the men discuss their futures as fathers and are very uninvolved with the their wives having a baby. In fact, all the male characters are vile. Bill tries to become an English farmer as he rejects his father’s lifestyle. He has ideas of more modern ways of farming but is it likely he will succeed? The bull unable to fulfil his purpose and Bill not being around to intervene when the cow has a stillborn calf. Bill is the most likeable character as he has a more fleshed out backstory. Gabby was okay and Byron the projectionist was nice. Eric was a good GP but not emotional in relationships. Everyone is human with good and bad.

The women are shut away in the home. It is difficult to know the women. They don’t talk about their babies. Irene goes back to her husband urged on by both the housemother and her own mother. She had left the house very unprepared (left her boots behind at the train station). She is stuck with her husband and has no agency in her own life. The most joyful part of the book is when the two women meet in the middle of the field and Rita teaches Irene how to build a snowman. Rita is a interesting character but there is not much development in her character (her relationship with her father; the drug taking and drinking, her life as a showgirl, had she been a loose woman). Has Rita inherited her psychological disorder from her father? Irene takes charge of her sadness and her ability to cope with her life. Irene being the more educated has stopped smoking during her pregnancy unlike Rita who also continues to take her antipsychotics. Rita goes back to revisit her old life but returns to Bill

The visit to the school was quite weird and, again, nothing happens. Andrew Miller has stated in the acknowledgements that he was told by his agent to “keep it weird”.

It is difficult to relate to the book and the characters. They don’t talk about their emotions and they are not fleshed out enough.

There are a lot of themes in the book. The war and the holocaust always being in the back ground.

It is a very interesting period of time. It is quite educational: trying to work as a doctor or a farmer and how to keep warm when supplies were in short supply. The trains were not running but people were still expected to get into work. Some members of the group remembered feeling very cold and not being able to get warm. It was a little jarring when the Krays were dropped into the narrative as though all the events of the winter of 1962-63 had to be mentioned.

It is a very English book.

We forgot to discuss the meaning behind the painting The Arnolfini Marriage hanging above the washbasin in Irene and Eric’s bedroom

Is it the fashion to write lowkey simmering books with nothing much happening in them? Are books becoming more highbrow?

Thank you to Richard for playing the music of Stranger on the Shore by Acker Bilk.

The audible version of the book is very good. It is read by Andrew Miller and he uses different voices for the characters.

REVIEWS BY EMAIL
It's a claustrophobic novel, focused on the two couples, and particularly the wives, thrown together by proximity and isolation. Their friendship, across a social class divide, would have been unlikely at the time. All are aware of, and fighting, past traumas and social expectations that they can’t discuss. Eric and Rita are socially mobile but Eric still carries a chip on his shoulder as the middle-class doctor and son of a Birmingham railway man and was acutely aware of keeping his status and how others might see him. They’re living in the legacy of World War II though this is only lightly touched on (Rita's father in the asylum; Bill’s father; Gaby). Mental illness is stigmatised and not discussed. Rationing has recently ended. The wives are just that (Irene, Rita and Alison) - no agency, personal money or opportunities- and are isolated and bored. The Arnofili painting in Eric and Irene’s bedroom seems to illustrate the social and contractual expectations of marriage at that time.

I thought it captured the details of daily life as I remember it as a six year old- coal fires; eiderdowns; adults, even the GP, smoking. The drinking and smoking is epic and shocking today, especially in pregnancy.

The Winterwatch documentary of the winter of 1963 brought back the social and economic conditions of the time-dependency on coal; lack of ’technical’ and protective clothing with workers in overcoats and caps; no motorways; branch railway lines; poor housing and war damage.

It’s salutary to find a period I remember, if only vaguely, featuring in an historical novel!

Overall, I thought it was a very well crafted and atmospheric read. I found some parts unlikely -Irene leaving her boots at the station and ending up in a school for the blind. It was predictable that one of the wives would lose her pregnancy -though this was more graphic than expected.

I thought this was a perfectly timed book for deep winter. Thank you for choosing it. Reading it felt very cosy amongst its snow-laden and icicled antiquity. A retro Christmas/post-Christmas crammed with tokens of the 1960s. In terms of providing a vivid and luminous imagining of 65 years ago, the novel really delivered - as slick and as evocative as a Stranger Things job. The never-ending cigarette smoke, the huddling round the gas fire/aga to get warm (depending on your circumstances), putting a record on, the bowler hats, the acutely clarified gendered and class roles and the easy sexism. I can see why Miller won the historical fiction prize.

The characters that were easy to understand were Eric and Rita, the more obviously fallible and tragic characters - both meaningfully from a working-class background.

I read it compulsively in the end. Miller’s personable and incredibly smooth descriptions of characters' experiences and thoughts that really get under your skin.

NEXT BOOKS FOR DISCUSSION

Tuesday, 17th February 2026 - Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan (Kevin)

Tuesday, 17th March 2026 - Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (Anne)

BOOKS ON THE SUGGESTIONS LIST

New books yet to go through a round of voting:

Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Love, Shipwreck and Survival (published in the US as A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst (suggested by Irene 19.01.26)

The Artist by Lucy Steeds (suggested by Alison 17.01.26)

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (suggested by Irene 15.01.26)

Books which have survived one round of voting:

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire by Henry Gee (suggested by Irene 15.10.25)

The Safekeep by Yale van Dee Wouden (suggested by Kevin 27.07.25)

Held by Anne Michaels (suggested by Kevin 04.06.25)

Book which has survived two rounds of voting:

Small Boat by Vincent Delacroix (suggested by Kevin on 26.04.25)

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