The Slowworm's Song
-
-
3.8 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
⭐ Out now: The Land in Winter, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 ⭐
The Slowworm's Song: a tender tale of guilt, a search for atonement and the hard, uncertain work of loving
'Sublime'
Independent
'Masterful'
Sunday Times
'Beautiful'
Spectator
An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with Maggie, the daughter he barely knows, when he receives a summons - to an inquiry in Belfast about an incident during the Troubles, which he hoped he had long outdistanced.
Now, to testify about it could wreck his fragile relationship with Maggie. And if he loses her, he loses everything.
He decides instead to write her an account of his life - a confession, a defence, a love letter. Also a means of buying time. But as time runs out, the day comes when he must face again what happened in that distant summer of 1982.
Praise for Andrew Miller
'Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight' Hilary Mantel
'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind' Sunday Times
'One of the best writers at work today' Telegraph
'A wonderful storyteller' Spectator
'One of those rare novelists who can rock up in any time and place and convincingly inhabit that particular historical moment' The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this meditative if diffuse offering from Miller (Pure), the past comes calling for an ex-soldier whose actions 30 years earlier during the Troubles continue to weigh on him. As a young British infantryman patrolling Belfast in 1982, Stephen Rose was involved in a fatal incident, the specifics of which are murky. Now, a recovering alcoholic working at a plant store in Somerset, he receives a letter requesting he travel to Belfast and give an account of the tragedy for an impartial body known as the "Commission." As he decides whether to comply, he composes a long letter to his estranged, 20-something daughter, Maggie, hoping to reconnect. "If one day you were to look at me as some of the people in that room in Belfast would look at me. Could I survive it?" he asks. The narrative tentatively circles around what happened in 1982, as Stephen recounts being raised by a pacifist father, training for combat, and, in the novel's slackest sections, drying out in rehab centers. The dramatic highlights do not exert quite enough pull to sustain the novel's tension; as Stephen himself reflects, "I'd say it's a fine line between telling old stories and just banging on about the what-was." There's a lot driving this affecting exploration of truth and reconciliation, but it doesn't quite hang together.
