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From the twice-Booker-nominated writer of Burntcoat comes a bold and astonishing literary masterpiece that explores faith, connection, and our relationship to the natural world.
Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind, a subject of folklore and awe, part-elemental god, part-aerial demon blasting through the sublime landscape of Northern England since the dawn of time.
Through the stories of those who have obsessed over Helm, an extraordinary history is formed: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate Helm, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish Helm, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture Helm, and the farmer’s daughter who fiercely loved Helm.
But now Dr. Selima Sutar, surrounded by infinite clouds and measuring instruments in her observation hut, fears human pollution is killing Helm.
Rich, wild, and vital, Helm is the story of a singular life force and of the relationship between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other.
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“Louise Brealey’s remarkable performance of the new novel by award-winning author Sarah Hall makes for thoroughly addictive listening…Brealey’s vivid characterizations of the personalities through the ages and her mood-setting skill with pacing—from mannered Victorian to tense modern day—are extraordinary…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
“Hall captures the turbulent, unwieldy forces of meteorological chaos and human desire that we can’t control, can barely even track.”
— Washington PostBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Sarah Hall is the prizewinning author of six novels and three short story collections. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award, Edge Hill Short Story Prize, among others, and the only person ever to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice. Haweswater won won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and Daughters of the North won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her story collection The Beautiful Indifference won the Portico Prize and was nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize.
Louise Brealey, AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, studied history at Cambridge University before studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in Manhattan. On television, she appeared in the long-running medical drama Casualty on BBC One in 2002, appearing in ninety-six episodes. Afterwards, she appeared in the BBC serialization of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, as well as Hotel Babylon, Law & Order: UK, Ripper Street, and in all series of Sherlock as Molly Hooper.