Helm : ‘Incandescently good.’ Sarah Perry

Published 28/08/2025 | Hardback,
Description:

** AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW **’Sarah Hall’s writing has conquered the body and the soul and now it conquers the wind itself.’ DAISY JOHNSON’Ye Gods, Ms Hall is talented.’ DAVID MITCHELL’Incandescently good … sexy and funny and erudite and strange.’ SARAH PERRY, GUARDIAN’You can always rely on Hall to blow you away.’ I PAPERA wondrous, elemental novel from ‘a writer of show-stopping genius’ (Guardian).

Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind – a subject of folklore and wonder – who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time.

This is Helm’s life story, formed from the chronicles of those the wind enchanted: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate it, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish it, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture it – and the farmer’s daughter who fell in love. But now Dr Selima Sutar, surrounded by measuring instruments, alone in her observation hut, fears the end is nigh.

Vital and audacious, Helm is the elemental tale of a unique life force – and of a relationship: between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other.

‘I can think of no other British writer whose talent so consistently thrills, surprises and staggers.’ BENJAMIN MYERS’I’m awed . I wouldn’t think a novel could be at once so taut and so multifarious, expanding one’s sense of what fiction can do.’ SARAH MOSS’Helm is as vital, fierce and free as the phenomenon it describes.’ FINANCIAL TIMES ‘A spectacular epic tapestry. Nobody could tell the story of our inextricable relationship with wild nature as beautifully as Sarah Hall.’ LEE SCHOFIELD'[Hall] sweeps from the cinematic to the specific, her prose pulsing with life and lyricism. Helm pushes both the boundaries of the novel and our relationship with nature.’ SPECTATOR’A big, celebratory book, in places delightfully playful, in others as tight and breathless as a thriller.’ ANDREW MILLER