It is a rum start because he is so abruptly dropped, his story giving way to hers. His life hangs in the balance, but after making a wonderful and, to us, unexpected recovery, he practically disappears from May’s narrative. May persecutes the nurses on his behalf (“I’m usually too embarrassed to order my own takeaway, but this was different”). He is rushed to hospital, where his appendix bursts. Just before Katherine May’s 40th birthday, her husband – referred to as H – is stricken with appendicitis on Folkestone beach. This is a winter’s tale of hard-won celebration, but – in keeping with other memoirs – it begins with what we are braced to predict will be a catastrophe. It is a personal, original and wayward examination of the idea that, as humans, we have – and need to have – our fallow seasons, that we must learn to revel in days when the light is low (one of her convincing thoughts is that we live in an overlit age). Not that it sets out in a know-it-all way to enlighten. If therapy is a talking cure, this beautiful book – Wintering – is a reading cure.
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