This is an exquisite story whose opening scenes could not be more gripping but which slowly builds into something thoughtful and more measured than you might imagine from its beginnings.. Melrose's extensive research pays off, and the flip from narrator to narrator, and the movement from one period of time to another is confidently handled.

This taut and tense tale of a Suffolk father and son united by grief but divided by guilt and blame and inarticulacy looks set to be one of my reading highlights of 2017. Beautifully written, well-crafted and with a slow reveal perfectly paced, this haunting story of farmers Landwyn and Vale Midwinter as they try to come to terms with events that happened in a previous life in Zambia is a remarkable debut novel and one that I found compelling from the first page. Highly recommended.

Midwinter is like nothing I've read in a long while. It felt a bit like there was no beginning and no end to the story, more like the author chose a period of time in the life of the main characters and told their stories during that time. This is something I found really interesting at the beginning of the book: getting to know Vale, his father, and his best friend, trying to understand their actions and their feelings. But as the story progressed and you knew about their past, I kind of lost interest in them.

Midwinter has an undercurrent of sadness during the whole story that didn't help me warm up to the characters. I cared about them and wanted a better life for them but it was difficult to really connect with them. Probably because they didn't even know how to connect with each other themselves. The atmosphere between father and son was always weird, charged with guilt and resentment and I just wanted for them to sit with each other and talk.

One thing I found quite fascinating in this story though was its evocative power. The description of places, nature and its fauna, were generous and detailed. I could easily picture the plantations in Zambia and the farm in Suffolk. But as I said, I didn't really connected with the story itself. It's well crafted and interesting enough, and I really thing it conveys grief and guilt really well but I found it a bit boring at the end, so I have a bit of a mixed opinion on this one.