Many long-term couples will recognise themselves in this exquisite portrait of marriage in the autumn / 'mid' winter of life. I look forward to seeing the film of the book .

Let this story of Gerry and Stella Gilmore remind you of the vital essentials of life. This novel simmers down into a deceptively simple love story of a couple in their twilight years. Gerry and Stella visit Amsterdam for a post-Christmas break. As their stories gently unfold, we learn more about the lives of this architect and teacher; as parents and children, lovers and spouses, their frailties and their strengths. Over their four days away, it becomes clear that, despite decades of happy marriage and their continued love for each other, Gerry and Stella’s lives are moving in separate directions: Gerry towards ‘just a smidgen’ more of strong drink, Stella towards a more devout Catholic life. Both characters are Northern Irish expats living in Scotland; there is an excellent sense of place during their break in Amsterdam, with their memories of growing up on the North Eastern Irish coast and their lives together in Scotland. The couple have a jokey, loving familiarity with each other and during their conversations and memories, their past years together are slowly revealed, returning to and circling around a significant event in their early marriage. It was not as maudlin as I had feared; there is a great deal of dry humour, reflecting the familiarity and affection of this couple’s decades together. There was a great deal of emotion evoked; I really cared for Gerry and Stella. This is a subtle, internalised domestic drama of a couple in their twilight years together. It might not end far from where it began (as Gerry says, ‘the whole holiday has been a cul-de-sac’) but at its essence is an exploration of a couple remembering and learning how to cherish each other, acknowledging and then loving their differences. This delicately nuanced portrait of a long-term relationship, their ageing together and shared significant experiences combine to make a seasonally warming read. A well-deserved Book of the Month (January 2018).

Bernard MacLaverty is one of those authors who you can imagine holding an audience around the fire absolutely spellbound. You can imagine him, in the Great Hall of Brian Boru or some other Irish King, plucking his harp and letting the story pour out of him. I would certainly be one of those sitting there entranced. This is the story of Gerry and Stella Gilmore, an aging couple on a midwinter break in Amsterdam from their home in Glasgow. They have been married for a very long time and it is Stella who has decided that they need to have a little holiday in Amsterdam. She has a reason for this which becomes clear at the start of the story. She is interested in visiting the Begijnhof, a community of women withdrawn from the world, but not nuns, and in finding out about membership. Gerry is unaware of this, but he has his own little secret or, at least, he thinks it is a secret. It is his liking for the bottle. Gerry, drunk and lost in the hotel corridor, is a comic tour de force. This is the kind of little touch at which Bernard MacLaverty excels. It is very funny and very human at the same time. This is one of the moments when the reader warms to Gerry. It is impossible not to like him. He is a man who likes music, and who like his comforts, such as a dram of Jameson’s. [Paddy does not get mentioned but then Gerry and Stella are from Belfast. I am sure that Gerry would like Paddy too]. Stella is the more spiritual of the two, a devout Catholic, seeking the solace of her faith. This is why she is interested in the Begijnhof, and has been researching it. She remembers someone telling her about it, many years ago, and that memory has been haunting her. For Stella, it holds out the possibility of a change in her life. I have let slip here that Gerry and Stella fled to Glasgow from Belfast because of the troubles. Understandably, they did not feel that Belfast in the 1970s was a safe place to bring up their son, which is why they moved to Glasgow. The whole story is about uncovering the reason for their fear. The whole story is about how they became the people that they are because of one event, one major traumatic event in the lives of two, until then, ordinary people. I am in many ways chary of that phrase “ordinary people” because I do not think that Bernard MacLaverty considers anyone to be ordinary. He sees what is unique in all of us, and that is what he brings to the fore in his storytelling. That is why he is an absolute master at the art of storytelling. That is why you must read this book.

Midwinter Break is one of those books that linger in your mind, keeping the cogs and wheels turning, until you understand why it is that it resonates so deeply. If Keats was right and ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’, then Midwinter Break is the novel equivalent of Keats’ phrase. As ever with MacLaverty, the prose is both beautiful and affecting. He has such a delicate touch; a nuanced, rich and understated dialogue from which you draw meaning without even knowing it. Stella and Gerry have been married for over 40 years. Stella is a practising Catholic; she used to be an English teacher and now does cryptic crosswords to keep her mind active. Gerry is an architect who once dreamed of making beautiful buildings but now takes solace in his liking for drink. Both met in their native Belfast but have long since moved to Glasgow when the battles of Northern Ireland took too much toll on their lives. When we meet them, they are quietly bickering as they prepare to go on a midwinter break to Amsterdam. But who, with any sense, leaves a bleak Glasgow in January to go to a bleaker Amsterdam where the winds coming straight off the sea are even more biting in that month? It transpires that Stella has an agenda she has not yet shared with Gerry, but this weekend will be the one that shapes the future of their relationship. In Midwinter Break, every word is thought through, every phrase precisely placed and nothing is redundant. MacLaverty offers a portrait of a marriage that relies on two people knowing and understanding each other, sometimes too well, as they share a lifetime of understood shared jokes and allusions. As they share their hotel room and together journey round Amsterdam, there is much to enjoy in this couples relationship, their mutual enjoyment and their still healthy sex life. Yet over this there is a dark cloud that hovers. Of course, intimations of mortality are present in the small but growing signs of ageing that each displays. Stella’s knees are stiff; Gerry is ever more forgetful. We learn that Stella has scars and as we understand how they were caused we are transported back to Stella and Gerry’s youth in the midst of the sectarian divide and we begin to understand what has really driven Stella to investigate the option she is exploring in Amsterdam. Throughout MacLaverty’s exploration of this marriage we see that there is love, understanding and companionship. And yet there is disappointment, disaffection and dark clouds loom. When Stella decides, after a disappointing interview in a women’s Catholic order, that she is ready to really talk to Gerry about what she wants for her life, the small cracks in their marriage could well grow into gaps of earthquake proportions. But this is not a drama. As I said at the beginning, it is an understated, honest and very truthful portrait. As Leonard Cohen says so eloquently in Anthem; “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Above all, Midwinter Break is a book about how optimism can still beat in our hearts in the face of serious adversity. As such, it is hauntingly, achingly, beautiful. I urge you to read it. I will be buying it as well as giving it to everyone I know. It is, quite simply, outstanding.

MacLaverty uses language with a deceptively light touch; never bludgeoning an idea but rather letting it seep into the reader. This is a poignant examination of the ever-changing relationship of a marriage and of how each of us becomes something quite different over the course of a life. The two protagonists have their weaknesses drawn with a depth that allows us to forgive and understand those weaknesses while recognizing our own. There is gentle humour as well as difficult truth in this short novel.