A wonderful written book about a wind called Helm. The story of its birth and growth. Of the folklore surround it and its part in people's life. Thank you Faber for giving our group the chance to read this.

Helm is a brave novel that relies on trust from its reader from the outset. That trust is rewarded with one of the truly great tales of recent times. The writing is exceptional, the structure genuinely awe-inspiring and the overall effect is profound. And I laughed often. I also wept. I have already said too much - I urge you to try the opening pages and see if you're hooked. I was, and I will remember this novel for a long, long time.

The Overstory meets Cuddy (with shades of David Mitchell) in an epic multi-era tale of Britain’s only named wind. Sarah Hall is an extremely accomplished novelist (one Booker shortlisted, once longlisted, part of the 2013 cohort of the decennial Grant 20 Best British Young Novelists list) and perhaps even more accomplished short story writer (once winner and once shortlisted for the Edgehill Book Prize for collections and astonishingly twice winner and once shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Prize for a single story – I say astonishingly as the shortlist is judged blind from 100s of entries). And both skills come to bear here – a novel but told in a series of interleaved stories which take place over thousands of years (as well as some more one-off cameos) The Helm wind is described by Wikipedia as “a strong nort-easterly wind [in Cumbria] which blows down the south-west slope of the Cross Feel escarpment and [may] take ts name from the helmet/cap of clour which forms above Cross Fell and [which] can predict and accompany a Helm” And the Helm itself is very much a character in the novel – with its own set of chapters which were actually my favourite of the story laced as they are with humour and pathos and often (rather appropriately) sweeping across place and time – not least in a bravura opening chapter which is probably the best opening I have read of any novel this year. The other main and through the novel recurring characters – the novel being told in a series of interleaving chapters mainly rotating through these characters in chronological order and with Helm observing and commenting – are: NaNay – a neolithic healer/visionary from a herding tribe, one of a number of tribes that form an uneasy truce over decades to build Magsca, a stone circle at the foot of the hill down which the (to them) Halron blows, a circle which is not just used to mark the solstice but as part of an attempt to appease the capricious wind, NaNay having a vision of a magstone which will complete the circle. Michael Lang – once a “Durham Cathedral scholar before becoming astrologer to jings and noblemen” and now a notorious helmet-wearing warrior priest in the service of King John and the Vatican, on a mission it seems to banish the demonic Helm wind by carrying a huge wooden cross to the top of the hill. I have to say these chapters for me had Thyros of Myr vibes at times and were the latest convincing of the novel. Thomas Bodger – a Victorian experimental meteorologist, on a mission to try and map the Helm wind and to understand and describe its mechanisms by using dyes to photograph its effects – he lodges with a distant relative and indulges in learned Dr Selima Sutra – a current day University researcher based fro 10 weeks at a now rather ramshackle (and very remote) research hut next to the huge radome on Great Dun Fell. She is investigating the prevalence of polymer microparticles in the air, but is receiving odd and threatening emails from an unknown group (her senior research partner having previously been caught up in what I think is the Climategate scandal). Other chapters include: Some museum type findings which link to the stories Some floridly overwritten correspondence from an 18th Century woman (a predecessor I think to a woman which who Bodger lodges) under effective house-arrest as her religious fanatic husband seeks to blow up the standing stones on the hill around which a group of legends have grown (and which he regards as paganic Various lists (eg of Helm’s effects at different speeds, its Foreign relatives of similar phenomena, its nicknames) Some chapters of Little Janni a young farmgirl who believes herself able to converse with Helm - something Helm confirms in his own chapters – but who is seen as wicked and mad by her parents and institutionalised. The story of a retired and PTSD-suffering policeman who gets his peace from gliding and takes a transcendental (and for the novel almost culminating) glider metrological-observatory trip into the veary heart of the Helm – the experience for him literally and for us in literal terms uplifting. Some meterological diagrams and formulae explaining the basis of the Helm wind – albeit something that by the novel’s end we think of as much more than simply a wind but one of the best fictional character of the year. Overall, while at times the four main character arcs are a little uneven (too often I found myself rather becalmed in them and wanting to return to the breezier Helm chapters), I think this should have been a strong Booker Prize contender.

A wild epic of folklore exploring the mythic figure of Helm, manifesting in human life and experience as a wind that can drive a person mad. This ranges over time and people for the entirety of human history beyond now into the future. It is slightly sinister and weirdly alluring. It reads at times a little like an epic poem. The writing style gives the feeling of a creepy, everlasting omniscience and a sense of something weird and always slightly out of reach. You have to let yourself go into the flows and eddies of this book, and when you do, it's a richly rewarding reading experience.