The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

I could not bring myself to sleep when the fireworks started. I peeked through the window and saw the Marbel midnight skies light up. I eventually got up, prayed with thanksgiving to God for adding another year, turned on the lamp, checked up on Nanay in the other room, and looked for Paul. Our family dog was hiding underneath the rattan chair, stressed out by the sounds of human celebration. 

All of the above is a preamble to what really kept me up: Andrew Miller's The Land in Winter. I picked it up at the Dubai airport for no special reason other than I felt like it. There's no rhyme or reason to my book choices, but the blurb at the back cover convinced me. The novel was going to be about a country doctor in winter time. At the book stall, at 2:30 am local time, I remember speaking to the lady in Tagalog without even asking if she was Filipino (she was). I looked for my credit card, hidden in the backpack, and she patiently waited, even as a queue of customers was forming behind me. "Happy New Year po," she said as I proceeded to the boarding gate. 

Andrew Miller is spectacular. There's so much interiority in the four major characters of the book. We read about two couples who live in the West Country on December 1962. They're neighbors. The first is Eric and Irene. Eric is the country doctor. Irene is the wife who leaves behind her city life to support her husband's career. The second couple is Bill and Rita. Bill is the Oxford-educated gentleman who pursues farming to escape his father's expectations; Rita is the wife whose past life contains many controversies. 

We soon learn that Irene and Rita are pregnant. A snow storm occurs, setting the tone and setting for the interrelated stories. 

The novel is brilliant. (Spoiler alert here) As the book is ending, Irene comes to a point of acceptance that her marriage isn't going to be perfect. 

It excited her, and she opened her eyes. The car, the moon, Eric's face (the face of an actor) were all changed. She looked at him, his concentration (there was ice out there), his frowning into the onrush of night. She might just sit there, do nothing, say nothing, but it no longer felt inevitable. Her anger, at that precise moment, was absent. The anger, the fear, the shame, the wound that had to be tended like a wayside shrine. And what had replaced them? Only this: the rattling of the little car, the whirr of the heater, the shards of light beyond the edges of the road. A sadness she could live with. Some new interest in herself. 

I'm starting 2026 on a high note, reading-wise. Finishing this book lends proof to my observation that buying books from airports is a good thing.