Truly original. Written from multiple points of view, each with a unique and compelling voice, this is a multi-faceted portrait of a most unusual character. I loved Helm (in fact, I'd have enjoyed the whole book written from Helm's point of view!); the author has captured the voice of the wind. It was hard work to keep up with the interleaved storylines at times, but the effort is well-rewarded. I found the book deeply tragic, both in terms of some of the protagonist's individual stories and in terms of the environmental overview, but with an element of compassion that gave me a sense of hope.

Helm blew me away (excuse the pun...) An eerie and unsettling collection of folkloric stories, with a beautiful sense of time and place.

This is unlike anything I’ve read and redefines what it means for a novel to have a sense of place.

We start by meeting Helm, the only named wind in England, who has been around for so long that it has seen many generations of humans come and go. Several of these stories are told and we see the different ways we have interacted with the environment over time. Whether that is trying to control or change or just understand it.

I really enjoyed the personality of Helm, was so distinctive and inventive while still somehow being believable for a wind. Of the humans, Selima’s arc was my favourite. The isolation of studying something most people don’t understand resonated with the remoteness of the location and her personal life really well.

As someone who lives not far away from Eden valley I also felt very at home reading about events in Shap and jokes about Todmorden!

Overall, this feels like a timeless climate novel that explores our past as well and present times and while it does think about the future it’s much more hopeful than most climate novels.

Wayward, omniscient, airy, slightly foreboding — this book was exactly what you might expect from one told from the perspective of wind, blowing together a mosaic of stories, characters, and artefacts that span the entirety of humankind.

This book will appeal to readers who love unique, witty, memorable writing. The language in this was, in my opinion, central to the story. Setting and atmosphere were also very strong. As a reader who’s drawn to character-driven stories, I think this is where the novel lost me, as we’re introduced to a large cast of characters who we don’t spend enough substantial time with to get to know and connect with deeply. I don’t think this is a fault of the book, but instead reflects the story’s priorities.

I normally love Sarah Hall’s work, but reading the description of this book beforehand I have to admit I already had doubts whether I would like it. But hey, it’s Sarah Hall! Give it a try!
Alas, this was not for me. It is definitely beautifully and poetically written but it is a bit too vague/obscure for my liking. And as a bookseller I don’t know yet how I would sell this to my customers…
Thank you Faber & Faber and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

Sarah Hall's latest novel, Helm, is a work about Britain's only names wind and the impact it has over centuries on people and the places it howls. Reading more like a collection of short stories connected by theme, Helm is both dazzling in it's scope but difficult to pin down. I felt blown through it's pages, carried on by Hall's majestic prose - do we expect anything less than brilliant from Hall? - and afterwards felt this a work one could easily dip in and out of and find something. There isn't much plot in the traditional sense, but there is much poetry in tone and style, and a true sense of the epic.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

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 be a strong Booker Prize contender.

Helm was marketed as a novel, but reads as a collection of short stories. This made for a very confusing read. It didn’t feel as though there was a consistent plot or narrative, and the lack of resolution for each story made it difficult to finish. The prose was lovely, but I feel as though the marketing for the book is misleading.

Initially I found this novel hard to get into - but I'm glad I persevered. The story of a wind through human history, original and almost epic in scope. I learned I had to let go and be carried along with the story and the different voices - just like being blown in a wind.

Recommended and many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy.

It might be a bit niche, but there’s something about polyphonic novels set in a tight geographical location but ranging though time that I really like. I loved Alan Moore’s Voice of The Fire, Andrew Michael Hurley’s Barrowbeck and now Sarah Hall’s Helm. It’s a really good evocation of a place and the people who inhabit it over thousands of years, culminating in a glorious soaring sequence that will live long in the memory, all told in distinct voices and some excellent prose.

Helm by Sarah Hall is an epic and ambitious novel with wide-ranging themes exploring our relationship with natural forces.

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.

'Helm' is one of those novels that's so phenomenally good it's difficult to know how to describe its excellence without reducing its power. Ambitious in its construct, breathtaking in its range, heartbreaking and hopeful in its message, 'Helm' had me captivated from the first page. The first sentence, in truth. Sarah Hall has somehow, by some magic, and her beautiful prose, brought a wind to life! A wind that has shaped humans and land alike through eons, a wind imbued with superstition, folklore, fear and timeless stories. Sarah Hall is basically a genius to be able to harness all this in her book. I am in awe.