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The premise of this book is initially what compelled me to read it, alongside the beautiful front cover! There is something magical and atmospheric about reading seasonal writings as the world outside shifts and changes to mirror what is on the page. Nancy Campbell states that the main motivation for this compilation of winter writings was to ‘use this precious time of interiority to look outwards. I wanted to nestle into the words of others.’ This is what the book allows you to do, although there are moments that are far from relaxing or snug. You are amidst the winter season in all its stark beauty and ferocity. There are some stories that were familiar and that I had encountered before, which, rather than being disappointing, was interesting and intriguing. It allowed me to see the stories in a new light when placed in this particular context and in juxtaposition with other stories around it. As Campbell writes, ‘to re-read is a discovery of self as well as story, rather like the return of the seasons when our own lives have changed.’ There are things that are familiar but also things that are irrevocably changed as we change as readers.

There are moments that take your breath away, like the very opening text by Anne Frank, to moments that are unnerving and linger long after you read them. Charlotte Bronte’s ‘A Shadow’ left more questions than it answered, a truly haunting text. Whilst all the time you are accompanied by the beauty and starkness of the outdoors in winter. It can be a time of excitement and anticipation for the new year but also a time of anxiousness and discomfort. There are explorations of how things take on unsettling and unfamiliar aspects in once comforting settings like the description of the beloved pear tree, a ‘skeleton, grey, gaunt and stripped,’ in Daisy Hildyard’s ‘A Winter Day on the Sea Beach.’ Alongside recoiling at the prospect of changed worlds, we are reminded of how much we depend on the landscape such as in Daniel Defoe’s ‘The Rainy Season’ and how ancient landscapes are, steeped in myth and folklore like the Inuit folktales about the raven.

This did not feel like a set of texts that could be consumed easily in one sitting. You move across time and countries with pace which can feel a little disorientating. Text types and length vary which required focus and concentration from me, a different type of reading experience rather than getting lost in the comfort of a longer fictional novel. It is a book that can be revisited each year and I suspect it will have something new to offer each time.

Thank you to NetGalley for my arc.