Helm: A Novel

by Sarah Hall

Overview

“Sarah Hall's writing has conquered the body and the soul and now it conquers the wind itself. She gets better with every word she writes.”–Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters and The Hotel

From the twice-Booker-nominated writer of Burntcoat, 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’ve 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063439924
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/04/2025
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368

About the Author

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria. She 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. 

Hometown:

Charlotte, North Carolina, USA and Carlisle, Cumbria, UK

Date of Birth:

January 6, 1974

Place of Birth:

Carlisle, Cumbria, UK

Education:

B.A., The University of Wales, Aberystwyth; M.A. in Creative Writing, St. Andrews University, Scotland

Editorial Reviews

I’m awed by Sarah Hall’s ability to hold timelines from prehistory to modern climate anxiety in simultaneous tension. I wouldn’t think a novel could be at once so taut and so multifarious, expanding one’s sense of what fiction can do.” — Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall and The Fell

“Sarah Hall's writing has conquered the body and the soul and now it conquers the wind itself. She gets better with every word she writes.” — Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters and The Hotel

"Hall produces a stirring, funny, absolutely idiosyncratic history-novel....This is a perfect meeting of mind, style, moment, and story." — Lithub

“Helm is just a brilliant achievement, and could really only be created by Sarah Hall. I can think of no better writer to give voice to a natural phenomenon, because she is one herself.” — Kirstin Innes, author of Fishnet and Brickwork

“Helm is a wonder. I'm almost drunk on so many voices and so much invention. There's something fearless in the way Sarah Hall writes. It's a novel rooted in a sense of place, but extraordinarily expansive in its time travelling. A big, celebratory book, in places delightfully playful, in others as tight and breathless as a thriller. A writer at full stretch and at the top of her craft.”
— Andrew Miller, author of Oxygen and Now We Should Be Entirely Free

“As powerful and as awe-inspiring as the storm itself, Helm's visceral prose swirls a host of vivid characters into a spectacular epic tapestry. Nobody could tell the story of our inextricable relationship with wild nature as beautifully as Sarah Hall.”
— Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell

"A monumental literary tribute to the interconnection, as old as time, of weather and humanity....Variously playful, irreverent, and lyrical...The ambition and accomplishment are undeniable, and carry the force of a major weather event."  
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Helm is as vital, fierce and free as the phenomenon it describes."
— Financial Times

"If you only read one book, make it Helm by Sarah Hall."
— The Guardian

"Helm pushes both the boundaries of the novel and our relationship with nature."

— The Spectator

"Virtuosic...To center a novel on a sentient wind and its relationship with humans is audacious, but Hall carries it off with conviction, fully inhabiting disparate voices across centuries...Readers will be swept away by Hall’s ambitious and formally daring narrative." — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

★ 2025-08-16
A chorus of voices, ranged across centuries, expresses the history of living with Helm, a weather phenomenon that blows in a remote valley in northwest England.

In Cumbria, in a valley called Eden, a fierce, tempestuous, monstrous wind blows that has impacted the world since time began. British novelist Hall, long invested in this region, gives life in her latest work to a mosaic of characters whose understanding of or connection with Helm illustrates their engagement with history, science, faith, “yarns, rituals, old beliefs…strange rustic traditions” and more. NaNay, “from the herding tribe,” sees Helm as a creature pulled from a dream; medieval astrologer Michael Lang considers it a demon; Victorian meteorologist Thomas Bodger is challenged by it as a scientific mystery to be measured; and Dr. Selima Sutar, in the modern era, has arrived to work at the Centre for Atmospheric Science observatory to study air pollution, at a moment when the weather itself, including Helm, may be at a tipping point. Hall dodges among these figures while adding more—a wayward, inventive child; an herbalist; a glider pilot—and intersperses other information about Helm: illustrations, wind speeds, alternative names, comparative phenomena. The result is an immense literary panorama, expressed at times in period language, traversing a mass of preoccupations with and perceptions of the entity that is Helm. Variously playful, irreverent, and lyrical, the assembly delivers a reading experience as diverse as its historical breadth and topical depth, sometimes following a character thread, at others evoking place or moment or comprehension in fine, descriptive, occasionally transfixing language, salted with local dialect. Impressive, absorbing, challenging, the novel sometimes overwhelms with its range and immersion, but the ambition and accomplishment are undeniable, and carry the force of a major weather event.

A monumental literary tribute to the interconnection, as old as time, of weather and humanity.

Kirkus Reviews