Category Archives: Books & Reading

Winter. Nebraskans are well-acquainted. Even in the milder times, like this year and the last, winter is a frigid creep around the fringes of our scarves, skulking under the brims of our hats.  

There is an instinct to resist winter. It is, after all – even to those of us who love the cold – an inconvenient season. Our commutes become more challenging. Daylight is fleeting. And if we are not resisting winter, then we are doing our best to ignore it. After all, in an era of thermostats and DoorDash, many of us are not interrupted by the whole of winter. Unlike our predecessors throughout most of human history, we do not have to rely on a stockpile of firewood, or animals that also feel the sting of wind chill, or cans and jars preserving our fall harvest. This has changed what winter has become in our societies.

After experiencing a series of upturnments in her life, Katherine May set out to explore ways to survive winter. Not just the physical season of winter – although she spends quite a bit of time in the uppermost northern regions of the planet – but also the spiritual and mental winters that come from burn-out and illness.  

After her husband’s sudden hospitalization, followed by the onset of her own chronic, unexplainable illness, May faces what all of us struggle with at one point in our lives: the realization that we need to rest, with no structured culture of rest and few ideas about where to begin. She wrestles with the guilt of “doing nothing,” even though what she is actually doing is allowing her body the time and space it desperately needs to recover. 

May refers to this time of her life as a “wintering.” She uses winter as a central thesis of living more aligned with a seasonal perspective, with periods of fertility and fallowness. We are tempted to see time and life as a long, linear line. Birth and death are points A and B. Our jobs are 9 to 5. It leads to a very individualistic, self-referencing way of living. Perhaps we would be better served by viewing it all – our lives, time, the seasons – as interconnected cycles.

Winter brings with it discomfort, darkness, cold. In nature, winter is a time to be survived – however, as May uncovers, much of nature is centered around preparing for winter. Neither the door-mouse nor deciduous trees survive by staunchly ignoring winter, nor do they let winter take them by surprise. There is no “keep calm and carry on” philosophy (May is British). Instead – at the risk of anthropomorphism – nature accepts the reality of the changes of the season, and adapts. Some animals hibernate. Some tree lose their leaves. It is a period of dormancy, to weather the lean times of few resources.

May also explores how northern human cultures adapt to the long periods of frozen darkness that comes with living in the Arctic Circle. May explores the geothermal pools of Iceland, the customs of the indigenous Sámi of Norway, and the sauna culture of the Finns. These groups seem to share amongst each other the belief that winter is not something to be overcome, but something to be embraced in order to weather it. And it is weathered most of all by relying on community.  

May, Katherine. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Riverhead Books, 2020.

Helen Simonson’s latest novel, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, is set in a fictional British seaside town, in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Its main protagonist is Constance Haverhill, a capable young woman of modest means, who spent the war years managing the estate of her mother’s childhood friend, Lady Mercer. Now that war is over and men are returning, Lady Mercer has informed Constance her services are no longer needed; also, Constance will need to move out of the cottage she’s been living in to make room for the new estate manager’s family. As a temporary courtesy, Constance has been asked to accompany Lady Mercer’s mother, Mrs. Fog, on holiday, but once this interlude is over she will be out of a job and a place to live.

Given its setting and subject matter, this could have been a much grittier book. There are oblique references to the population’s overall gauntness, mentions of crippled soldiers begging for alms at London railroad stations, and multiple accounts of family members lost to influenza. Instead, Simonson ensconces her characters in the charming resort community, Hazelbourne-on-Sea, and directs them in what book publicity material calls “a timeless comedy of manners.”

To pull off this production, Simonson enlists an extensive cast of supporting characters, representing many ranks of British society. There’s Constance’s new friend, Poppy Wirrall, the trouser-wearing daughter of a local baronet, who runs the titular motorcycle club in collaboration with women she served with as a dispatch rider during the war. (She’s also organized Wirrall’s Conveyance, a motorcycle taxi and delivery service to provide employment for less well-off members of the club.) There’s Poppy’s brother Harris, a morose former Royal Flying Corps pilot who lost a leg in battle, and Jock Macintyre, his mechanic, who survived the war but turns to drink upon losing his wife and daughters to influenza. There is Kumar Pendra, an RFC pilot from British India, who notes to Constance that service members from countries with dominion status (“the Anzacs, the South Africans, and even the Chinese Labor Corp…”) receive more favorable post-war treatment than those from colonies like his, which are agitating for home rule. And there is Percival Allerton, a wealthy American engaged to Lady Mercer’s daughter, Rachel, who is concerned Mrs. Fog’s renewed friendship with the de Champney siblings, rumored to be “of mixed bloodline” even though they are the children and acknowledged heirs of a prominent Barbados sugar planter, will damage his family’s reputation.

Together, through clever dialogue and revealing interactions, these characters—some wittingly, others unwittingly—bring to life the social and familial upheaval caused by war and epidemic. You have an old guard adamantly attempting to restore pre-war hierarchies of race, gender, and class; emotionally and physically damaged soldiers whose status as landed gentry no longer guarantees them employment, fiancées, or respect; families decimated by influenza; and women who embraced new jobs and freedoms during the war, only to be laid off and sent home now it’s over.

As expected, characters mostly allude to their consciousness of these rifts and inequities indirectly, through droll and circumspect dialogue. Nevertheless, it is clear who is embracing change, who isn’t, and what some of the collateral damage will be. This book is recommended to readers who appreciate a British sensibility, historical fiction without too much grit, and social commentary in the tradition of Jane Austen.

Simonson, Helen. The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club: A Novel. The Dial Press, 2024.