The Slowworm's Song

by Andrew Miller

A Best Book Of 2022 (The New Yorker) and A Best Book Of Fall 2022 (Wall Street Journal)

An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with Maggie, the daughter he barely knows, when he receives a summons - to an inquiry in Belfast about an incident during the Troubles, which he hoped he had long outdistanced. Now, to testify about it could wreck his fragile relationship with Maggie. And if he loses her, he loses everything.

He decides instead to write her an account of his life - a confession, a defence, a love letter. Also a means of buying time. But as time runs out, the day comes when he must face again what happened in that distant summer of 1982.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Historical Fiction, Irish Literature, Literary Fiction, Historical, Book Club

Paperback

First published March 3, 2022

About the author

Andrew Miller was born in Bristol in 1960. He has lived in Spain, Japan, Ireland and France, and currently lives in Somerset. His first novel, INGENIOUS PAIN, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Italy. His second novel, CASANOVA, was published in 1998, followed by OXYGEN, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Booker Prize in 2001, and THE OPTIMISTS, published in 2005.

Reviews

[Beata · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not an easy read, and it must not be ... In a letter to his daughter, Maggie, with whom relations have been rather cold and shaky, Stephen Rose attempts to come to terms with a tragic event from the time when he served in Ireland at the beginning of the 1980s. His whole life was shattered by one reaction in the circumstances which overwhelmed him. He paid a high price for his will to escape home and isolate himself from Quaker community, and for his inexperience in a place where experience was everything.
I did not relate to Stephen, however, I could not not feel empathy for a broken man who for thirty years has been trying unsuccessfully to rid himself of guilt and pity.
A sad novel but written equisitely and Mr Miller's fans will not be disappointed. I was not ......
A big thank-you to Andrew Miller, Hodder & Stoughton, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggie - writing is no cure for insomnia, though it is, I suppose, a use for it. When I started all this, still reeling from the letter, threads of panic in my chest, I wanted ... what? To get in my
side of the story before they got in theirs? One more, one last go at making sense of it all? I think for the last couple of years, I’d almost given up on that, making sense of it, and was having a go at living. The letter changed all that. It was like hearing in the middle of the night some small sound - a shifting, a cracking - and knowing at once it's the noise of the house about to collapse. So I’m trying to get things down before the chimney comes through the ceiling, though I notice now how hard it is to say anything without saying everything. Words have shadowy roots tangled around the roots of other words. Pull up one and you pull up twenty more.

The 9th novel from an author who has been Booker shortlisted (with “Oxygen”) and who has won the Costa Novel and Book of The Year awards (with “Pure”) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and IMPAC Dublin Literary Awards (with his debut “Ingenious”).

I have previously read only his 8th novel “Now We Shall Be Entirely Free”.

That was a Napoleonic era story about a traumatised British soldier returning to a Somerset home after service in Spain seemingly haunted by something he saw or did in the war, and which takes place against the background of an enquiry in Spain about those British Army actions.

This is a modern era story about a traumatised British soldier returning to his Somerset home after service in Northern Ireland seemingly haunted by something he saw or did in the war, and which takes place against the background of an enquiry in Belfast about those British Army actions.

So the links are clear but I have to say that I far preferred this book as I felt its predecessor was consciously too much of an “energetic adventure story” that the author said was the type he loved as a boy;

Returning to “The Slowworm’s Song” and just a comment on the title. As an Epigraph makes clear it is from a line in Basil Bunting’s modernist poem Briggflatts (which line is referenced in the novel): “So he rose and led home silently through clean woodland / where every bough repeated the Slowworm’s song.”. The author has said “It was just right. There’s just something in that little scrap of verse from a long, long poem, which gave a suggestion of coming free through something”

Unusually (I think) for the author the book is written in the first person – and the narrator is Stephen Rose writing (we will return to that) some time in (I would guess) the late 2010s. Stephen’s father was a Quaker, but at age 16-17, Stephen decided to join the army and in 1982 when on a four month tour of Belfast, was involved in an incident. Now he has been asked by an independent Commission which is examining the events of 1982, if he will testify at one of their sessions.

When Stephen was bundled back by the Army to England and discharged with no action taken, he lapsed quickly into alcoholism and although he had a daughter Maggie by his partner Evie – Evie and he split over his drinking and a prison sentence for drug dealing, and eventually Evie decides to cut all ties with him. How many years later, he (now a struggling recovering alcoholic) and Maggie (who has moved back to Somerset) have established a tentative relationship.

Stephen works at a garden centre, sees a consultant for his serious liver problems, attends the local Quaker meetings where a number of the elders keep an eye on him, and has a slightly odd (to him) friendship with the owner of a local family Undertakers, a woman of a similar age rumoured to be involved with the National Front.

The conceit of the book is that – following the receipt of the letter from the Commission Stephen starts to write daily jottings in a note pad, ostensibly addressed to Maggie (as “you”) but as much (it not more) for Stephen to explore his thoughts and set down both his current life and gradually the suppressed memories that the letter has uncovered – of his time in the army (with the actual incident being approached gradually) as well as how he messed up his role as partner and particularly father.

Later Maggie does read the notes, after an increasingly tormented-by-his-past and his present Stephen lapses back to alcohol and ends up in rehab – and initially this causes real breach between the two as Maggie sees Stephen’s previous withholding of his Belfast past as a lack of trust.

If I had a criticism of the book it would be of the aforementioned conceit – an all too common one in books. I understand that it is a way to get around the artificiality of a first-person novel but here I think the artifice did not work. Stephen has no real identified talents as a writer, all we know of him is a part written attempt at an essay for an OU degree, but the book is not written in any form of simple/toned down form (quite the opposite – it’s a very literary novel) …….. so how are we meant to view Miller’s assessment of his own crafted novel (one he has says took him many attempts and years to write) – that an ex-soldier struggling with trauma and health issues can write it down almost verbatim?

But that is my only real criticism of a book which is eminently quotable (albeit that quotability only points out the issues with the conceit).

Firstly it is I think a brave writing decision (especially for an author who in his previous book took the safer route of historical fiction) to write a sympathetic portrayal of a British soldier during the Troubles – particularly as it was published close to the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday – and I think on balance this is managed well.

Secondly it is a nuanced exploration of so much; PTSD and alcoholism; how government policy falls on the soldiers of young troops and legally weights on their subsequent lives; the rewriting of guilt and history on both sides of the Troubles; male vulnerability and even suicide – a tragically always topical subject but one largely ignored in literary fiction due not least to its increasing female bias in readership and authors: note that this exploration of male vulnerability is so much better than the “boys own” nature of his previous novel; Quaker practices of silence and self-reflection and weighing of ones actions rather than those of others (a really subtle part of the book); the importance but also the dangers of story telling; guilt and the idea of (to quote the author”) “how do you recover from something you’ve no business recovering from”; how to remake a father-daughter relationships with an adult daughter with no childhood base to build on.

Overall 3.5*

Stephen, she said, we have to be careful not to get trapped by our stories. That's one of the things we can leam. To tell the story differently, even to let go of it completely. To do that for a single minute and see what's in the space we free.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am still way behind with my reviews, as I finished this book over a week ago. It was a lucky find in the local library - it is pretty rare to see anything this new on the shelves.

I have now read all of Miller's novels, and for me this one is one of his best, though I am not convinced it is the kind of book that will appeal to prize juries. Its main protagonist Stephen Rose is a recovering alcoholic who lives in the Somerset home he inherited from his Quaker father, supporting himself with a part time job in a garden centre. His quiet routine is upset by a letter asking him to participate in an inquiry into an incident he was involved in as a young soldier in Belfast during the Troubles , in which he killed an unarmed man. He also has a fragile relationship with a daughter he barely knew as a child, who now lives nearby.

Miller draws this material together quite convincingly, and Stephen in particular emerges as a nuanced character. On balance I think this book just about deserves five stars.

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a young man, Stephen Rose, turns against his family's Quaker beliefs and joins the British army, eventually serving in Northern Ireland during the terrible Troubles. While there he commits an act he cannot drink into oblivion.

Now, finally sober after a long dissipation, divorced from his wife, estranged from his daughter, and with few years left to live, he is writing to his daughter about his heretofore unanalyzed life.

Two brief quotes.

"Did I set out that day to shoot an Irishman? Payback for the dead bandsmen and the dead horses in the London parks? I have examined my conscience more than most. . . . The mind is not a box you can just empty out. Do we, at any given instant, know all that is in our heads? All of it? Do you? And suppose there is, in some fold of the brain, some crevice, unlit and unvisited, the thought of doing harm, some small idea of it, very small, does that count as an intention? Even when the rest of what's there is different, is opposed, means no one any harm?" (p. 160)

"It was a long session and we didn't break until about eight. I was knackered but you can't go to bed at eight even in rehab so I made tea and sat in the community room. I think I told you there are books in there, mostly of the self-help variety, but I didn't want that. You can get sick of it, this business of working on yourself. In one of the cupboards I found a coffee-table book of photographs, old black-and-white pictures of cities-New York, London, Delhi, Milan. The buildings were sharp, in focus, very detailed. The people were blurred and feathery. I don't think anything was intended by that. I think it was just to do with the techniques they were using, length of exposure and so on, but it felt accurate, the way we exist on some sliding scale between air and stone." (p. 200)

The novel is reminiscent of Marilynn Robinson's astonishing Gilead, but with this exception; the book is from the second person point of view, addressing "you." I believe the literary device is called apostrophe.

The only have a problem I have is that the form as it's realized here doesn't allow for other voices. The reader is stuck throughout with Stephen Rose's voice, which isn't objectionable. But I would've appreciated a shift in register now and then. For instance, Stephen's daughter never speaks; he instead relays whatever she has said.

This novel is written with admirable clarity and is an end in itself. But It would not be unhelpful for those lacking the background to have read Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland; it is the best single-volume history of the Troubles I know.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Andrew Miller is one of my favourite writers and I've read all his novels. If he has a weakness it's probably that his characters are never quite as compelling as one would wish and his lack of humour. This is his latest offering, a first person narrative of an alcoholic who served in the British army during the Troubles in Ireland and who has remained traumatised by something that he did there. The novel is written in the form of a diary to his estranged daughter.

I'm afraid I didn't see eye to eye with it. In fact, it sometimes bored me. I didn't like its mawkish tone. Usually you can rely on Miller to write beautiful sentences but this is written in more prosaic prose, perhaps to give it greater authenticity. I would have preferred less authenticity and more artifice.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had the chance to hear and meet Andrew Miller
Marlborough Lit Fest 02.10.2022

** How he came to write this book?
• Fathers and Daughters (“a big one for me”) Miller’s daughter is seventeen.
• The Troubles. Miller is Scottish/ Irish ancestry and aged sixty one he grew up with daily news
• Somerset. The levels, Glastonbury and the mysterious landscape.

** Stephen Rose. First person narrator. Miller’s first time writing in this style. Led to many problems! He wouldn’t do it again. Finding authentic, sensitive language and not something’ literary’.

** Northern Ireland subject still very sensitive. The only book he’s had to pass before lawyers. The Savile Enquiry slogan “Set The Truth Free” sits alongside a mural Miller passed in N. Ireland saying “Forget The Past”. Miller very gratified to get contact from the Pat Finucane Centre responding to the book (The PFC is a non-party political, anti-sectarian human rights group advocating a non-violent resolution of the conflict on the island of Ireland).

** characters. Doesn’t do detailed descriptions of people’s faces (unlike Saul Bellow) also writes in a way to see people peripherally.

**historical fiction. Recent history is more contestible. 18th century, his main specialisation, is pre-Wikipedia so not as many reader queries/complaints! The militant bits in Slowworm were tricky; a lot to get wrong.

** next book will be with a new editor (first in 30 years after retirement of present editor). It will be set in the 1960’s (1962). On the cusp of change. It’s a time of Acker Bilk rather than The Rolling Stones. His books take about three years to write.

** of his book’s titles: once he gets a name, he stays with it. The only title he isn’t too happy about retrospectively is Casanova.

*** My review***

My first thought as I started this book was the undeniable similarity with Now We Shall Be Entirely Free . Though the former book was set almost two hundred years previously during the Napoleonic era wars, both books revolve around the military, and military men, and a tribunal investigating questionable behaviour.
These similarities make me question the author’s range of ideas, especially since the protagonists in both books are consumed by a sense of guilt.

The Slowworm’s Song is set in Northern Ireland in 1982, during Operation Banner (The “Troubles”), and there’s an acknowledged read across to the real life Savile enquiry which investigated the ‘Bloody Sunday’ killings.
Stephen Ross tries to organise his thoughts by reference to his older daughter Maggie. The estrangement he feels (for the most part self- inflicted) is articulated in a way that reads as almost self pitying. Stephen’s road from childhood to adulthood reflects a marked contrast from the hedonism and free spirit of his youth, and the unlikely relationship with Evie, to the formality and structure of army life.

I did pick up some information on a conflict that remains in the memory, not least with the Northern Ireland protocol Brexit cock- up
I wasn’t aware of the British army Yellow Card; I hadn’t looked at the Saville enquiry report in any detail. There’s a reference to Thomas Reilly, shot dead in west Belfast, and the connection to popular music in the 1980s was something I was unaware of. Stiff Little Fingers, Bananarama and Spandau Ballet all had direct connection to Reilly and his family. (Spandau Ballet’s song “Through the Barricades” was a direct result of the connection)

At the end of the book, and on reflection, I remain non plussed by the book. A novel that tries to get into the mind of a squaddie is always likely to be challenging, and throw in alcoholism and family dysfunction and it’s a tough mixture. Around the fringes, and directly consequent to reading The Slowworm’s Song I picked up some interesting information, but it’s those snippets rather than the novel itself that remain with me.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shame, failure, guilt, and the search for redemption are the outstanding themes in this understated narrative of an ex-soldier of the British Army who served during the Troubles in Belfast. One horrific incident in 1982 has come to define Stephen Rose’s life. He has not been punished except by himself, and is now a recovering alcoholic who missed out on raising his daughter with his ex-wife, Evie.

It’s 2011, and he has received a letter from a place called the Commission, asking him to come in and tell his side of the story. He's not on trial, but Stephen has, essentially, prosecuted and persecuted himself for decades. The novel takes the form of the epistolary, as Stephen writes a letter to his 26-year-old daughter, Maggie, as a way of pursuing and achieving an atonement for his wreck of a life. “I sometimes think that’s what it comes down to, …ways of keeping yourself on the surface of the earth, of buying the minute or two you need to let the shadow pass.”

The tension is the rotted pit at the center of the story, the event that was a heinous mistake, but that overshadowed and resoundingly affected Stephen’s ability to function as a reasonably healthy adult. At age 51, is it too late? The ex-soldier is placing his faith in this letter he is writing to Maggie, and in so doing, recounts events from his Quaker upbringing to his current existence as a lonely man working at a garden centre shop back at his childhood home in Somerset. “Imagine England without dandelions or daisies. Without buttercups!” Lots of extended botanical metaphors, like Stephen Rose, the protagonist.

There’s so much UK and Romantic UK poetry and history that I lack personally and academically, so if you ARE exposed and experienced, you’ll have even more to enjoy. Also, you can be completely ignorant of Northern Ireland, IRA, and Troubles history specifically and yet enjoy the tale for what it is on a simpler plane. Miller is just a good storyteller, and nothing strains under his creation, although there are bleak and murky moments. The author is expert at staying out of his own way and merging reader with story.

“Words have shadowy roots tangled around the roots of other words”, he says, “Pull up one and you pull up twenty more.”

(Also, the third epigraph quotes a line from a Basil Bunting poem, "Briggflatts," with the eponymous title of this novel.)

A big thanks to Europa Editions for this elegant and elegiac novel.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second book of Andrew Miller’s that I’ve absolutely loved (the other being the 19th-century historical novel Now We Shall Be Entirely Free). This one is about a man named Stephen Rose, a British soldier during the Troubles in Ireland, who was raised by a widowed Quaker father and in turn has a daughter; they are estranged, but he is hoping for a better relationship with her. A letter arrives about an inquiry that is being conducted into a military incident in his past, and he writes a letter to try to explain to Maggie (and also to himself) what happened when a tragedy ensued during his time in Belfast. Beautifully descriptive and full of emotional resonance, this is one of the best novels I’ve ever read about a good man who is at the very end of his tether. Stephen is an alcoholic suffering from PTSD whose love for his daughter shines through as he unspools his tale. The writing is top notch - both the description and the dialogue will pull you in, even as much of the latter is Stephen’s inner monologue, trying to make sense of his life and the things that threaten to be his undoing.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary.A prose that soars,a masterful,heartwrenching and compassionate dissection of a soul.

[Mary Lins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ex-British soldier, Stephen Rose, the narrator/protagonist of “The Slowworm’s Song” by Andrew Miller, charmed and captivated me immediately. Stephen, in his fifties and suffering from chronic liver disease (aka “the drink”), is writing this confession/love letter/memoir to his daughter, Maggie, a rapprochement with whom has been recent and tenuous.

We know that he did something he’s ashamed of while a British soldier serving in Belfast during the Troubles, and a reckoning is coming. He wants his daughter to understand what happened, and why, so he begins his story from his motherless childhood raised by his Quaker father. In revisiting his past he works through long-repressed feelings, memories, and guilt. Will understanding lead to enlightenment, atonement, and redemption? Is forgiveness possible?

I have read many novels about the troubles, but Miller provided an entirely unique perspective and point of view in this incredibly deep and moving novel.

Oh my, I thoroughly fell in love with Stephen! He’s complicated, damaged but self-aware, smart and full of the “Brit Wit” I adore.

Toward the end I slowed down and savored each page; I was reluctant to close the book (and did so in tears). I’ll be thinking about Stephen and Maggie for a long time. “The Slowworm’s Song” is going on my Top Ten List for 2022 for sure!

Thanks to Europa Editions for the Advanced Readers Copy. Europa Editions publishes wonderfully unique novels from all over the world.

[Gemma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag for me. A recovering alcoholic receives a letter which summons him back to his life as a soldier during the Troubles in Ireland. What happened there is kept a mystery. Instead we get a lot of backstory. I enjoyed his relationship with his father and the part set in Ireland but wasn't so keen on his life as a drug dealer or his relationship with his estranged daughter. Top notch prose writing though.

[Caoilinn]

I reviewed this one for the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/11/bo...

[Nicole D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relationship status: It's complicated.

This was another excellent book which features the Troubles but isn't really about the Troubles. A troubled person with a troubled past pertaining to the Troubles and the troubles thereof. Troubling. What's not troubling was how engaging this book was. Can I get through the rest of the review without saying the word trouble? Shouldn't be ..... difficult.

An event can change a life, and it can change relationships and when that event resurfaces (so tempting to use the word) it can wreck a new kind of havoc or it can lead to healing.

This book takes us on such a journey and Stephen Rose, flawed, broken, drunk, Stephen - through a confessional to his somewhat estranged daughter, leads us through this very human experience. It was a beautiful book book, well written, felt very authentic.

[Milly Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was sent to me by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

This book was so heartfelt and is a definite five star. Stephen Rose is a recovering alcoholic and is trying to get back the relationship with his daughter, Maggie, that he lost when she decided, aged 13, that she didn't want a father. Now, aged 51, he is taking baby steps towards her. However, he fears that these fragile threads will be snapped because he has now received a letter asking him to give evidence at a Commission in Belfast.

As a youth, Stephen left home to join the army and after training was sent to Belfast during The Troubles where an incident occurred and he was sent home, an incident that has coloured his life ever since and is the reason why he drinks. Maggie knows nothing of this incident and Stephen is afraid that once she knows the truth, she will turn her back on him - this time for good. Therefore Stephen decides to write to her, to explain everything on paper as he is unable to tell her face to face.

This 'letter' is what we read and the writing is so beautiful and poignant. This is a letter full of guilt, and a request for forgiveness. He spreads his life out for his daughter to see. Although we might be angry with Stephen for ruining his life by drinking, when you read this missive to Maggie, you are on his side. His pain is so raw, you feel for him, you really do.

This was such a wonderful read. Thank you, Netgalley, for giving me the chance to read this.

[Rosamund · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first person narrative by a recovering alcoholic could be a hard act to pull off, but this is a tightly written and sensitive story about the aftermath of being a British soldier in Belfast at the height of the Troubles.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

My head is so crammed with the past I sometimes have to hang on to things - the rumble of a tractor going past, the ache in my knees - to stop myself sliding down into it. If I don't, you'll come looking for me one day and I'll be hidden behind a wall thirty years thick. Or else you'll come in to find a young man sitting at the kitchen table in DPMs and webbing, his beret in his hands, his rifle sloped against the edge of the table.

Don't expect to get much sense out of him.

In my mission to continue to defy everyone who posts their best and worst reads of the year lists before the year is over, I have another book to add to to my Best Books of 2022 list, which I have finished less than 2 hours shy of 2023.

The Slowworm's Song is a slow character study - told in the format of a letter by a man, Stephen Rose, to his daughter, Maggie, - Andrew Miller crafts a flawed but beautiful portrait of a man wracked with guilt over an event that took place in summer of 1982 during the Troubles. He has received a letter from a Commission requesting that he come and tell his story. Stephen decides to sit down to write a letter to Maggie to explain what transpired, but instead writes an account of his life - from his boyhood where his mother passed away while he was young and he was then raised by his Quaker father, to him joining the army, to his relationship with Maggie's mother, to the collapse of that relationship and his years of alcohol abuse. His recollections of his past are intermingled with his present - after many years of not having a relationship with his daughter, he is working to build one. His letter shows a lonely man deeply craving a deeper bond with his daughter, but he struggles to communicate that to her, outside of his writing.

While this novel is only about 250 pages, it is not a quick read. There is minimal dialogue - where dialogue does occur, for the most part, there are no line breaks for it. The pages of this novel have minimal white space. It is purposeful on the author's part - forcing you to read and focus on every word and every line of what Stephen has to say.

And why are we trying to sort things out now, after thirty years?... After thirty years the truth is either free already or lying on its back with its feet in the air.

The story is not so much about what happened on that day, but about how Stephen has never spoken about it or come to terms with it. He has bottled up his feelings of guilt and shame for 30 years. It's dictated his entire life. Therefore, when he starts to tell the story of what happened - and intends to give his daughter a short, simple explanation - he instead drifts through memories of his life, flowing from one to the next, out of sequence, trying to unbury the past or delay telling the truth a little longer or possibly both in equal measures.

I had never heard of this book when I picked it up, but the premise spoke to me. I love stories where characters come to life off the page and Stephen definitely fits that description. He is incredibly nuanced - imperfect, but a good person at heart; I loved his voice and wanted good things for him. I'd definitely recommend this book, but keep in mind it's a dense 250 pages. It's not for everyone, but it certainly was for me.

[Leigh Swinbourne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Kindle edition of Andrew Miller’s ‘The Slowworm’s Song’ has this tag-line: ‘a profound and tender tale of guilt, a search for atonement and the hard, uncertain work of loving’ This is placed after an excerpt from a review by The Guardian: 'The writing is near perfect. But the novel's excellence goes far beyond this…’ Praise indeed, and on it goes. Certainly, Miller’s sentence-by-sentence writing is highly accomplished and the various background settings thoroughly researched and convincingly evoked. But I feel ‘The Slowworm’s Song’ is partly a sleight-of-hand. Presented, marketed, as high literary art, its story-telling leans more towards popular fiction, the surface excellence adroitly masking this.

Here is a tale of addiction, crime and drawn-out repentance, but for the reader, no particularly uncomfortable ride. It’s stuff one might expect to find challenging and confronting, shocking even. But while much of it is indeed compelling, our first-person narrator charms his listener(s) by telling them largely what they want to hear, and what they hoped they always knew. After the difficult journey one turns the last page with a comforting sigh.

It is Miller’s calculated indulgence that is my quibble here. I have another which is related, and that is that the story as laid out is entirely predictable. From the moment this intimate confession begins, you sense the way it’s headed, all the ups and downs. That’s because you’ve been there before, in countless Hollywood scenarios.

Stephen Rose has received a non-binding summons to a ‘truth commission’ in Belfast to tell his version of ‘the events of the summer of 1982’ when he was serving as a British soldier during ‘The Troubles’. He’s worried about possible prosecution, so we know that he has committed a serious crime. We don’t know what, but we can take a pretty good guess. He decides not to respond, but we know he will, because otherwise there won’t be any closure. Something must change his mind. He’s a recovered alcoholic, therefore a relapse is on the cards. What might trigger this? The ‘confession’ is addressed to his beloved daughter with whom he has recently reconciled. So, the daughter has to reject him. Why? Because he tells her of the crime he has committed instead of the ‘commission’. With her rejection, he hurls himself into a suicidal alcoholic orgy, but is saved in the nick of time by his country neighbours, and re-surfacing, faces up to his duties and thus wins back the girl.

But surely there’s nothing wrong with any of this; if it’s predictable still it’s plausible. ‘Crime and Punishment’ runs on much the same tracks. But Raskolnikov is no Stephen nice guy. Various chips on his shoulder, nurturing unhealthy homicidal obsessions self-justified by political and philosophical hypocrisies, you fear much bad will come from him and it does. Dostoevsky’s killings are pre-meditated and brutal, the repentance long and painful, and then there is punishment, as there must be.

Let’s compare this with Stephen’s crime. A possible template is set early when he is busted for dealing drugs with his mate, Marcus. Stephen is selling hash, but he is jailed for heroin found in his car which he doesn’t know about. Could have been Marcus, but Stephen says: ‘I still don’t know if the police put it there. Police in the 1980s were very capable of such a move’. So, Stephen is found guilty for a crime he didn’t commit. Who really is at fault here? Most likely, ‘The system’, and we keep this in mind.

Son of a Quaker, brought up in this faith, Stephen, ex-dealer, drifting, joins the British army, which seems unlikely. What is more unlikely is that his Dad, who has also done time, but as a conscientious objector, is fine about his son being trained as a professional killer. (As an aside, there is an awful lot of decent and understanding people in this book, along with much political correctness.) Stephen is trained up and posted to Belfast. By this stage, with the hints dropped, we know he’s going to kill an innocent, but we don’t know how.

This act, the climax of the novel, described in heart-stopping detail, proceeds thus: Stephen is part of a stakeout of a house. He is in a back alley, on his own. He illegally cocks his rifle, he can’t remember when or why, nor when or why he releases the safety catch. Then: ‘Adrenalin shuts down the kind of thinking that takes place in words.’ A boy appears, who sees him and makes a run for it, and Stephen shoots him dead.

The killing, as presented, far from being pre-meditated, is on the contrary, unintentional, almost inadvertent. In a certain light it could even be seen as an unfortunate accident. Yet an innocent has been killed. Who is to blame if not Stephen? Throughout the novel Miller makes reference to the ‘colonists’ and we also have his dedication: 'for my daughter, new citizen of the Republic’. It appears that Stephen is also a victim, of an oppressive ‘colonial’ system. The Republicans also commit atrocities but this is where the real blame lies.

This ‘event’ is followed by a decades long alcoholic odyssey through Europe as Stephen struggles to come to terms with what he has done. But is this a true redemption, or even punishment? If the man is by nature an alcoholic anything could have plausibly triggered him off. But leaving that aside, what kind of redemption is drinking? It could just as easily be seen as an indulgence. It would have been a tougher road to remain sober and attempt to construct some worthy life while carrying the knowledge of what he has done. That is not the novel here, but it does mean that Stephen’s eventual facing of the music comes across as much as an ‘out’ as a genuine act of courage and contrition.

Stephen has wrecked the lives of others and his own life, but it’s largely not his fault, and so he regains it again, a free man. In this shift of responsibility from the personal to the impersonal I can’t avoid the impression that Miller is neatly stepping around his real story. Instead of looking evil directly in the face, like Dostoevsky, he palms us off with politics.

Miller is a brilliant writer, and in ‘The Slowworm’s Song’ there is certainly no failure of talent or skill. But I do feel there is a failure of nerve. Perhaps Miller lacks that ‘splinter of ice in the heart’ that Graham Greene wrote of.

[Nick Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad I persisted with this. The first half, somewhat aptly perhaps, was lyrical but a little ponderous - I worried that this might be another of those novels built solely on the eventual reveal of a secret that'd been artificially held back, but in the end this was not the case, and the second half reaped the benefit of what had been gently sown earlier.

This tells the tale of an alcoholic ex-serviceman and father, trying (and failing, in places) to cope with events thirty years earlier and the trauma brought back to the surface by an invitation to attend some kind of truth and reconciliation hearing in Belfast. As this was an epistolary novel, with the protagonist writing letters to his estranged adult daughter (this worked well - a lot better than some other novels in the same style which I didn't find convincing) I thought this made for a very compelling way to explore a character's thoughts and recollections about the past, as well as the impact on the present. There were similarities with 'Turning for Home' by Barney Norris in the sensitive and affecting treatment of an aging man's regret and how the past is viewed differently by subsequent generations.

[Michael Flick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The hard process of loving and remembering.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was true to Mr Miller's previous books of trauma by violence for our main character and then redemption sought from those close to him. The setting for this was Belfast and then England and in the current time. Stephen served in Belfast with the UK army and during his tour an event of significance occurs. We don't discover what the event was until more than midway through the book. Most of the story is a letter to his daughter, to explain how his life went off the rails and why his relationship with her suffered for it.

I didn't find this book as compelling as his other books. I discovered Mr Miller through his book 'Pure' and I loved that and I've read all his books since. This book won't make me change my mind about how I admire him and the stories that he tells - the different time settings, the different circumstances, the shear imagination he has. However, I found that this one dragged... there was too much dredging of the past, which caused the events that are being recounted to lack their proper import. So not as stellar a review as I've left for him in the past.

[Laura McNeal · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a slight sense of being on the outside of this book which comes from the chosen point-of-view, which is first-person epistolary, I guess you’d call it, a novel that is a letter to the narrator’s daughter and also the oldest of narrative forms: the confession. Sometimes the “you” of the narrative tripped me up because I am not the “you,” Maggie is, and especially when Stephen (the narrator) is recounting things that have been told to him by a third character, I had to keep remembering who is meant by “you.” And yet I loved every sentence of the book. It is so unaffectedly eloquent, and so deeply felt, and so gracefully rich in place and time. Ah, to have Andrew Miller’s gift.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Slowworm's Song reminds me of Gilead by Marilynne Robinson in a lot of ways. It probably deserves 5 stars for all its honesty and beautiful writing. Just know it will also be a difficult read. Sometimes I did not want to pick up the book because it made me sad.

[A.J. Sefton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of a man tormented by guilt and regret. He served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and something happened that profoundly disturbed him. He became an alcoholic, his marriage failed and he was estranged from his daughter and thus missed out on her growing up.

The tale opens as he is trying to rebuild his relationship with his adult daughter via confessional letter. At the same time, a summons (of sorts) arrives inviting him to attend an inquiry relating to the event in Ireland. A time, perhaps, for facing up the past and maybe some kind of redemption.

Miller is an exquisite writer who has the command of language and he has the ability to confront the depths of humanity. There are parts that are routinely mundane, intricate, reflective and touching. There is a stark contrast to the life in Ireland, the rituals of being a soldier, and his later job at a garden centre. I particularly enjoyed the parts where he is in the orchard, often during his alcoholic episodes, but there is something of an almost romantic and comforting tranquillity encased in it.

​Evocative and brilliant.

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Elfie Deadman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally one of my favourite books. So well written. heartbreaking. Amazing insight into British military involvement in Ireland, peace and reconciliation and truth telling. Written as letters to his daughter which makes it so much more personal.

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. A real gem of a novel.

[Joan Kerr · Rating 3 out of 5]

"[The past] cannot be made less and it cannot be made safe and it cannot be hidden and it cannot be forgotten.


Andrew Miller is always worth reading. Few books have given me quite the shock and pleasure of reading Ingenious Pain for the first time and I loved Pure too. The Crossing, which I’ve written about here, didn’t do it for me, but still I celebrated the fact that Miller goes where no one else has gone. The Slowworm’s Song is a much more conventional book, the story of a man rebuilding his life after more than twenty years of alcoholism triggered by his army service in Belfast during the Troubles. His motivation is the 26-year-old daughter he met for the first time only a few years ago, with whom he’s building a fragile relationship, and the book takes the form of a long letter to her. It’s a letter not meant to be sent, though. He’s really writing for himself to try to settle his own ghosts, and he’s still protecting himself from having to speak face-to-face.

The hope of the book, the heart of the book for me, was not Stephen’s willed journey of self-discovery but the Quaker community his father belonged to, that still supports him without judgment. I loved the early sections about his life with his widowed father:

"I had what you have not had: a father who took on without complaint the day-to-day business of tending a child."

“Tending” – what a beautiful choice of word, so characteristic of Miller. Stephen meets the same “tending” when he spends a period in rehab after his revisiting of the past drives him back to drink. There he develops for the first time a relationship with his “brothers”, all men who have ruined their own and others’ lives, and begins to see that blame and self-hatred are not the justified punishment for harming others, but a way of not accepting the burden of having done it. “…how do you recover from something you’ve no business recovering from? How do you come back from what you can’t come back from?” is the question Miller says he was asking himself as he wrote. One of the lessons of the book is that you don’t do this by going further into yourself, you do it by allowing yourself to be accepted by others.

It’s always a pleasure to read Miller for his style and his insight, but I did have reservations about the structure of the book. In the very best sections you forget that the story Stephen is telling is addressed to “you”, his daughter Maggie, but there are times when the “you” strikes a very clumsy note:

"You served three years in the RAF. If I remember rightly you ended up as a senior aircraftswoman…"

"You asked me if I was feeling better. I said I was….You asked if I was going to drink again. I said – I hope not pompously – that an addict cannot promise not to go back to his addiction, that I didn’t want to drink and that I didn’t think I would but it was a deep illness and to make promises would be wrong. You nodded…"

As far as I can see Miller could have achieved the same closeness to Stephen’s point of view without awkwardnesses like this if he had used a close third-person voice. He would probably say he chose this structure because Stephen’s relationship with Maggie is the thing that motivates his revisiting of the past, but for me Stephen’s remaking of himself has much deeper and far-spreading roots, going right back to the man his father was and the community he grew up in. Looked at from that point of view, the book feels bigger and more grounded. Not his best work, but still worth your time.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moving between past and present, Stephen recalls events in his life. Some are joyful, such as his first meeting with Evie, the woman who became his wife. 'We didn't speak - I'm sure we didn't speak at all that night - but we had noticed each other and that was enough. You wake to somebody. You feel them wake to you. The first moment is so small.' Other events are not joyful, or small.

It takes some time before we learn the details of the pivotal event that took place during his time as a young soldier in Northern Ireland. It's as if he is putting off the moment at which he has to set it down because then it will be out there and cannot be taken back. When it's revealed, it is shocking in nature and its consequences for the people involved. The incident is something he has kept to himself for over twenty years, unwilling to have anyone else share the burden of knowing about it. 'I would attend to it in the dark, my secret illness.' However, the fact that a momentary lapse for which he cannot forgive himself has weighed on Stephen's mind for so long meant he retained my sympathy.

The author effortlessly takes us inside the mind of Stephen. He's torn between his desire to reveal the truth in his own way, conscious of the inevitability that it will come out at the inquiry, and his fear that Maggie, when she learns about his role in the incident, will decide to sever all contact with him, just when they have begun to build a relationship. 'Maggie, I know I'm labouring this but I want you to know I was once someone others could speak well of. That I could do things without making a mess of them...'

The Slowworm's Song is a quietly powerful book about secrets, guilt, the courage to face up to your past and the gift of forgiveness.

Read my review of Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller https://whatcathyreadnext.co.uk/2021/...

[Tundra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really works it way under your skin. A powerful narrative on addiction and guilt. How to survive when there is no way to undo the harm. This a thoughtful and provoking response to a problem that must be pervasive amongst many veterans.

[Linden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A former British soldier must come to terms with his past during the Troubles.