Helm

<p><b>A <i>Guardian,</i> <i>Observer, New Statesman, Financial Times, Independent, BBC </i>and <i>Daily Mail</i> Book of the Year </b><br><br><b>‘Vital, fierce and free.’ </b><i>Financial Times</i><br><b>‘Incandescently good.’</b> Sarah Perry <br><b>‘Pulsing with life and lyricism.’ </b><i>Spectator</i><br><b>‘Fiercely exuberant.’ </b><i>Observer</i><br><b>'Delightfully playful.' </b>Andrew Miller<br><b>'A truly astonishing thing.' </b>George Monbiot <br><br><b>A wondrous, elemental novel from ‘a writer of show-stopping genius’. </b><i>Guardian</i><br><br><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE, THE GORDON BURN PRIZE AND THE WINSTON GRAHAM PRIZE </b><br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>Vital and audacious, <i>Helm</i> 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.<br><br><b>'Sarah Hall's writing has conquered the body and the soul and now it conquers the wind itself.' </b>DAISY JOHNSON<br><b>'I can think of no other British writer whose talent so consistently thrills, surprises and staggers.' </b>BENJAMIN MYERS<br><b>'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.'</b> SARAH MOSS<br><b>'Helm is as vital, fierce and free as the phenomenon it describes</b>.' <i>FINANCIAL TIMES </i><br><b>'A spectacular epic tapestry. Nobody could tell the story of our inextricable relationship with wild nature as beautifully as Sarah Hall.' </b>LEE SCHOFIELD<br><b>'[Hall]</b> <b>sweeps from the cinematic to the specific, her prose pulsing with life and lyricism</b>. <i><b>Helm</b> </i><b>pushes both the boundaries of the novel and our relationship with nature.' </b><i>SPECTATOR</i><br><b>'A big, celebratory book, in places delightfully playful, in others as tight and breathless as a thriller.'</b> ANDREW MILLER</p>