Helm

by Sarah Hall

From the twice-Booker-nominated writer of Burntcoat, an astonishing literary masterpiece that explores faith, connection, and our relationship to the natural world, for readers of The Overstory and North Woods

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.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Nature, Historical

340 pages, Hardcover

First published August 28, 2025

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Sarah Hall took a degree in English and Art History at Aberystwyth University, and began to take writing seriously from the age of twenty, first as a poet, several of her poems appearing in poetry magazines, then as a fiction-writer. She took an M Litt in Creative Writing at St Andrew's University and stayed on for a year afterwards to teach on the undergraduate Creative Writing programme.

Her first novel, Haweswater, was published in 2002. It is set in the 1930s, focuses on one family - the Lightburns - and is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-framers, due to the building of a reservoir. It won several awards, including the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book).

Sarah Hall currently lives in North Carolina. Her second book, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), set in the turn-of-the-century seaside resorts of Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).

The Carhullan Army (2007), won the 2007 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction.

Her latest novel is How to Paint a Dead Man (2009).

Reviews

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that Sarah Hall’s “Helm” blew me away would be too cute, but it is the first novel I’ve ever read about wind.

I don’t mean that “Helm” involves wind like, say, the cyclone that kicks off “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” No, this is a story in which wind is the central character.


Stranger still, it’s not entirely fictional. In Cumbria, in northern England, not far from where Hall grew up, a strong wind coming off the mountain Cross Fell is called Helm. Historical records, riven with folklore, suggest it’s been blowing for centuries, maybe millennia. But Hall doesn’t just feel the wind’s awesome force; she captures its impish consciousness. In the novel’s opening chapter — a rowdy, ironic survey of Earth’s creation — Helm sweeps into being almost as soon as the planet gets a steady climate. And then we start to hear the wind in a voice somewhere between James Joyce and Cookie Monster.



“It’s a crazy coming of age,” Hall writes. “Helm enjoys the feeling, of agency, of urgency, so plays with Helmself to arouse the feeling: desire for great, wreaking, havoc-making release, surging from a sky orifice, down the mountain and — yes, yes, oh yes, there’s Helm. … Flooding the valley with noise and velocity, making an impressive mess.”

Once humans arrive on the scene, things become interesting. “Lots of identity politics, superstitions, bonkers rituals and boffin theories about Helm,” Hall writes. “So begins the inevitable existential dilemma of who/what/why am I? Heavy, especially for one so aerial.”

Hang on to something screwed down….

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Marcus (Lit_Laugh_Luv)]

"for readers of The Overstory and North Woods"
just take my money already

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel tells the story of Helm, a mischievous wind, which has been wafting over the terrain of Northern England since time began. The storyline covers the entire history of the world, employing characters representative of various epochs, such as a Neolithic tribe, an early Medieval wizard-priest, a Victorian steam engineer, a farmer's daughter, and a scientist who fears that pollution is destroying Helm. The book explores environmental themes and the relationship between nature and humanity.

I particularly enjoyed the introductory and concluding chapters. The chapters in between could not sustain the same level of momentum. It is written in an unusual style, where the reader must think about what part of history is being covered, which is sometimes difficult since it is not told in chronological order. It contains many characters, most of whom play a small role and disappear quickly. This book falls into the experimental category, which for me, usually means it is difficult to become immersed in it. Such is the case here. It is a book I admired in terms of creativity but did not really love the reading experience.

I received an advance reader copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the 2025 Goldsmiths Prize
Longlisted for the 2025 Gordon Burn Prize

Helm doesn't know when Helm was born.
Or brewed.
Conjured or conceived.
First formed above the highest mountain.
First blown into the valley.
Long before humankind - that brief, busy interlude.

Time happens all at once for Helm, more or less, relative to longevity. A blink of the eye, universally. (Warning: Helm loves clichés, typical for English weather.) Something of a disorder,
some would say.

Of what fantastical, phenomenal and calculable things Helm is made! Maleficence and data and lore. Atmospheric principles and folktales, spirit and substance, opposites and inversions.

Helm is Sarah Hall's most recent novel since Burncoat, which in crystalline prose told a psychologically intense story of artistic creation, love (and lust), and the aftermath of medical trama both personal (a severe stroke) and societal (a much more severe and rather different version of Covid). My review of that: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

And I'll say up front, Burntcoat - the rather odd take on Covid - was for me stronger than this novel, which is my one relative disappointment of a very strong Goldsmiths list.

The novel is based on - and parts told from the perspective of - the Helm Wind - which, as per The Met Office:

The Helm Wind (the only named wind in the UK) is a strong north-easterly wind hitting the southwest slopes of Cross Fell in Cumbria.

When a wind blows at a constant speed and direction through a layer of stable air perpendicular to the ridge or peak of hills and mountains, the result is something called a lee wave. The air is squeezed as it passes over the high ground and descends briefly downwind (the lee side) of the hill. Because the air is stable, it tries to re-establish itself by rising again and this causes a waveform. Where the wave crests you can end up with clouds.

The Helm Wind is most common in late winter and spring, and when it blows, a heavy bank of cloud (the ‘helm’) rests along or just above the Cross Fell range. A slender, nearly stationary roll of whirling cloud (the ‘helm bar’), parallel with the ‘helm’, appears above a point 1 to 6 km (up to 3 miles) from the foot of the fell. The Helm Wind can be very gusty as it blows down the steep fell sides but ceases under the helm bar cloud.

For a geological phenomenon, the Helm narrator is remarkably anthropocentric, although justifies this with it is when humans evolve that things become interesting. Because humans become interested in Helm, and is, in the author's words "a sort of slightly puckish, naughty, sex pervert character", which, while achieved, made the Helm sections rather unedifying.

The rest of the narration intertwines various stories down the centuries, indeed millenia, of human interaction with Helm, several based on historical preceden, including :the imagined story of how the main stone in the Long Meg and Her Daughters Neolithic stone circle was put in place; a medieval character based on, but not (as he himself points out, he'd have to be 200 years old) the 13th century mathematician, scholar and possible wizard Michael Scot; a glider pilot trying to recreate and exceed Noel Mclean's then record breaking 1939 glider flight; to a present-day story of a researcher into micro-plastics, who finds herself threatened by a shadowy group (for me an unsuccessful attempt to introduce a eco-thriller element to the plot).

The end of the world - yes, the great stage onto which every climatologist has been flung and must perform a role. To convince, to warn, to provide advice. To juggle people's expectations about how hazardous and disastrous it will all be. To prove the increasingly debatable truth, wasting time. It is so incomprehensibly, harmfully, counterintuitively stupid - the fight against knowledge, the rejection of science, tantamount to putting one's fingers in one's ears and singing We wish you a Merry Christmas over and over. Why would people not want to know - what they are sucking into their lungs, which systems are conveying waste above their heads - how humanity is altering the whole caboodle? This supposedly pure, poetic, upland rain is actually thick with shite. Under the infrared spectroscope, it is swimming with technicolour microscopic shards. Roll up, folks, meet the three wicked sisters - Polyethylene, Polypropylene, Terephthalate. (Boo-hiss, goes the crowd.)

Gumble Yard's review has an excellent summary of the various elements: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The construction and research that must have gone into the novel - which the author has said she worked on for 20 years - is impressive. But in literary terms, it was too close to historical fiction for my taste, and it felt Ben Myers had done this much better with Cuddy.

3 stars.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Helm" is the story of a mountain wind that watches the history of human civilization in its valley, mocking, loving, and occasionally destroying everything beneath it.

It begins with the birth of the world and ends with data charts and satellites, yet the same wind blows through every page, ancient, sardonic, and slightly proud of its own immortality.

In essence, it is the biography of a wind and a chronicle of human folly. It tells how people across ages have worshiped, feared, and studied the same invisible power, each believing they could name or own it.

The structure drifts like weather fronts, moving from prehistoric myth to medieval horror to industrial realism to modern climate anxiety. The writing is lush and stormy, full of sudden shifts, and roaring energy.

Through all the lives and centuries the wind encounters, Helm remains the single connecting presence. It is both narrator and landscape, the real protagonist of the book. Humans appear like gusts, brief and noisy, then vanish. Their inventions, superstitions, and ambitions all end up scattered like leaves in the air.

The novel shifts from myth to history to science fiction but always circles back to the same truth: the world is ruled by forces far older and wilder than we are.

"Helm" begins with a gust of arrogance: both a weather system and a personality, Helm fancies itself the unseen monarch of a single valley in northern England, the Vale of Eden. It is as self-conscious as a poet and as vain as a storm cloud, telling us of its geological birth, its lonely aeons of practice, and its delight in scaring early humans who crawl beneath its mountain. The wind is a capricious god, jealous of solidity yet in love with movement.

From there the novel becomes a whirlwind history of the valley and its inhabitants across centuries. A prehistoric seeress named NaNay dreams of a sacred red stone; a medieval exorcist named Michael Lang arrives with his mute apprentice to battle invisible demons; Victorian engineers and their exhausted navvies blast tunnels through the mountain for the railway; and, much later, scientists and meteorologists climb the same slopes to study the famous local wind.

Each era deposits its debris of belief, ambition, and half-understood science like sediment under a restless sky. Helm observes them all with the amused impatience of weather watching insects build their fragile nests.

The book's premise is dazzling: climate as consciousness, air as witness. Unfortunately, its execution often drifts. Hall's sentences breeze, swoop, and occasionally overheat, like cumulonimbus showing off.

The story itself, however, remains vaporous. The novelty of an omniscient wind soon becomes a storm in a teacup; impressive noise, little progress. For a while, the conceit feels thrilling, until one realizes that nothing much is actually happening except a lot of atmospheric commentary.

Still, there are moments of beauty: the railway scenes roar with energy, the prehistoric sections pulse with mythic vitality, and the descriptions of weather have the tactile exactness of a barometer losing its patience. Yet the novel too often tries to pass turbulence for motion. It wants to be a climate epic but reads like an overlong gust of a lyrical weather report.

By the end, I felt windblown, dazzled, slightly deaf, and faintly resentful. A fascinating concept, but like the air itself, hard to hold onto.

This book is a collection of half-baked ideas, a low-pressure system of ambition swirling around a hollow core. It feels like an exercise in wind management rather than storytelling, all gust and no grounding. And I gotta tell you, this kind of literary weather pattern has passed through before. If the country of France had not spent a century chasing aesthetic squalls between 1850 and the 1960s, maybe I would say this one was worth stepping outside for. But really, there is nothing here that is original or fresh or even properly condensed. It is all mist and echo, a series of passing fronts pretending to be a climate.

Perfect for the TikTok generation, short glittering drafts of thought, gone before they gather momentum. You keep turning pages like checking the sky for meaning, entertained by movement but never touched by rain. When it is over, you realize you have been standing in a gale that never quite became a storm. It is pretty, yes, but it just blows and blows until you are left winded, wondering why you bothered to face the weather.

2.5 stars. The writing glows like sunset through stormclouds, but the plot – where the heck is the plot??? The wind talks beautifully; it just never really goes anywhere. Recommended for meteorologists.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found out about Helm via a Guardian review, which led me to believe that it was a climate change novel. That might have been been me extrapolating hopefully, as it isn't really. However it is a genuinely original and fun environmental novel, as it centres upon a windy weather phenomenon localised in a valley. This wind, named Helm, is essentially the protagonist. The reader views Helm via people who took a particular interest in it across history, from neolithic times to the present day. Sarah Hall is an adept writer and I enjoyed how she playfully distinguished each period of time. Particularly after disliking the writing style of the last novel I read, the language of Helm was a pleasure:

Damn this wretched heath, It is the thirsty mind capering. He must drink. He must drink. A man can, under irrational circumstances, easily undo himself, convince himself of gibbers and goobers. The mountain is an exceptional place for doubt. For by its nature it offers choice: it is either impossible or surmountable. On the mountain, man must accept his limits and his mettle, he must traverse trust and fortitude and endurance. The mountain is itself theology, a gift from the maker of this world; it the radical, indisputable staircase to God.

Writing ecological fiction is a tricky balance; it's difficult not to focus on human characters. Here, the reader has to understand Helm via their experience. Hall manages this cleverly with the range of characters across a wide span of time, each having a different sort of interaction with Helm. These are by turns worshipful, respectful, loving, hateful, curious, and worried. In the present day, a weather researcher is concerned that pollution and climate change may be destroying Helm, but its end is by no means certain and much about it remains mysterious. I liked how the human narratives all felt like glimpses into lives, while Helm remained a constant throughout. The span of time felt genuinely wide and the Eden Valley a vividly real place. I commend Hall for making a stylistically experimental novel thoroughly enjoyable to read. I also really liked the illustrations.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this miracle of imagination, Sarah Hall presents her argument against man's effect on the weather. The wind has been anthropomorphized in fable and song (They Call the Wind Maria, the Wayward Wind et al), but here it is given a distinct identity, and the respect granted through millenia is threatened by the effects of climate change. Wonderful perspective.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminiscent of North Woods. Instead of a house being the main protagonist, in this case it’s a very strong wind. A wind that has become folkloric or studied scientifically. We learn so much about the wind and the people affected over the centuries. Through the wind’s perspective, we get insight into the nuances and customs of whichever particular era we find ourselves in.

It took me some time to get into the book. It’s a novel that requires patience. But I did finally get there.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short and weird novel was apparently a twenty-year labour of love, and as somebody who's read all Sarah Hall's previous work, it definitely shows. Aida Edemariam pulls together all the threads beautifully in her review in the Guardian, so I won't repeat the same things here. Helm spans millennia, giving us glimpses into the lives of characters from the matriarch of a neolithic tribe to a medieval priest determined to cast out demons to an eighteenth-century wife who wants to stop her husband blowing up the local witch stones to a girl cast into a mental institution in the 1950s to a present-day climate scientist. If this sounds breathless and crowded, it is, but the characters are linked by their location in the Eden Valley in Cumbria and especially by their relationships with Helm. This local wind produces distinctive weather manifestations when it blows, creating a lee wave with a crest of whirling clouds; the track of the wind is powerful, but the force ceases immediately under the cap of clouds. Hall's enormously ambitious book tracks how Helm has been understood across the centuries and the threat posed by climate change to its continued existence. We even hear from Helm itself (or Helmself, as it prefers), jauntily irreverent: 'People have been giving Helm a hard time For Ever for being Helm. But, whatever, not bothered (OK, maybe a bit bothered)... It's true, Helm might have absorbed some negativity... Probably human-related (no offence). They can have that effect.'

I genuinely admire Hall as a writer, and I also admire what she was trying to do here, so I'm sorry that I found Helm such a consistent slog, especially as almost all its other early readers seem to have loved it.  For me, one of the big problems was structure: although there are about six or so characters with central threads, their narratives are split into tiny chunks and scattered throughout the book, so just as I felt I was sinking into one person's thought-world, I was jarred out again. Then there are the bits that don't relate to any of these central threads, which I especially struggled with. I had the sense that Hall was enjoying having a play, being a bit silly and self-indulgent, and she's absolutely earned it after her brilliant career, but it didn't make some of the over-egged pastiches any easier to trudge through. Helm (possibly due to Helm) also has a weird obsession with sex, and this especially comes out in the one-off scenes, such as an annoying sequence where a Victorian couple get it on in a hot air balloon. There's a hint of Cloud Atlas about some of Hall's narrators - and yet Cloud Atlas benefited from its nested structure, whereas this is, deliberately, all over the place. The series of final encounters with Helm at the end of the novel are powerful but don't entirely justify what came before.

But as I say: I'm an outlier. If, like me, you enjoyed some sections of this book but couldn't quite get on board with the project, I'd suggest trying one of my favourite Halls instead: The Carhullan Army, How To Paint a Dead Man, The Beautiful Indifference. 3.5 stars.

I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imaginative, lyrical, compelling - review to follow

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

⇝ 4.5 stars

[Mason Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

What the hell, finishing the year with a five star review. Exactly what I want from a novel right now: humanity is ephemeral and fleeting in the long-scale view, and instead Earth is at the center of the story. The form of the book was perfectly comforting and sad. The dramas of our days are ultimately short and immaterial; perhaps our errors will leave lasting impacts but I won’t be here to see it, and I’m okay with that. Great read!

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarah Hall’s name on the front of a book is as good as a money-back guarantee as far as I’m concerned; I think I’ve read all of her novels and short story collections and have never been even slightly disappointed. Helm is another five star wonder of a book. There are many named winds around the world - the Cape Doctor, the Mistral, the Sirocco, the Foehn - but only one in the UK, the Helm which blows from the summit of Cross Fell, the highest point in the Pennines, down into the Eden Valley to the east of Penrith, which is where Sarah Hall grew up. She says in her Afterword that Helm has been a work in progress for twenty years and that slow process of maturation shows in every page of this wonderful book, which is presented as a swirl of stories caught up in the gusts and eddies of the Helm as it barrels down from the fell. Some of these tales come and go throughout the book, others surface briefly and then are gone; they range from the Neolithic (the creation of a stone circle which still stands and is known as Long Meg and Her Daughters), through a medieval religious fanatic to a Victorian meteorologist, a disturbed and abused young girl in the early Seventies to a contemporary tale that links (although they never meet) a climate scientist and a retired police officer who finds relief from his PTSD in a local gliding club. All are deeply moving and affecting and all are linked by the central character of Helm itself, a mercurial, flighty, trickster given equally to fun and games and dark, dangerous moods.

[Andy Weston · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whereas I admire Sarah Hall’s writing, I don’t enjoy it.

I tried again here, chiefly because like a few other of her novels, this is set almost on my doorstep. Her descriptive passages about the landscape read well, but they are too few, and not enough to enthral me as I find the plot so dull.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

My, what a book! I´m amazed it wasn´t shortlisted for the Booker.Spanning centuries, luscious prose which envelops you,vivid characters. And then there´s Helm.

[Renee Godding]

A very unfortunate DNF...

[Kip Kyburz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helm is the wind, a very distinct and powerful wind. Located high above Cumbria, it has distinctly shaped the cultures that reside below it and Sarah Hall's newest novel shows us how. Tracing the history of this small region of northern England from the ancient tribes that originally settled the area and built their Neolithic monuments to an eco-researcher in the present day, tracking the death of Helm at the hands of human indifference. The book shuffles through viewpoints as we witness various points in time and the human stories that shift and coalesce with Helm's help. I recently read another book that used drops of rain to tie characters across epochs together into one narrative and felt that this conceit fell flat, that is not the case with Helm. Helm is the main character, and a wind that binds; it blusters, it blows, it shapes.

[Gill Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must be going through a purple patch with 2 x 5* books in a row. However Sarah Hall’s latest book Helm definitely deserves the accolade in her expansive exploration of the Helm wind across the ages. Hall’s writing is magnificent, she somehow conjures up the wind as a being without becoming too anthropomorphic. Her sentences are short, intelligent and observant, without unnecessary full blown descriptions: she tells us just enough about Cross Fell and the Eden Valley to paint a picture. For me this part of the Lake District is geographically very close, barely two hours away and much visited especially as my husband is an inveterate fell runner ( he has run the Kentmere horseshoe) plus his parents used to live near Greystoke and we love Alston which is famous for its tar barrel burning ceremony on New Years Eve.
The book weaves tales from several epochs centring on Cross Fell, the Eden Valley and manifestations of the Helm wind in all its destructive, wild energies. My favourite cameos were: NaNay leader of a prehistoric tribe of hunter gatherers who construct a stone circle in alignment with the winter solstice, this can be visited today and is known as Long Meg and her sisters, together with its mystical carvings; Michael Lang a religious fanatic freshly back from the crusades in the time of King John who tries to exorcise Helm with a massive cross; Thomas Bodger a Victorian scientist charged by the Royal Society to investigate Helm with a revolutionary steal contraption; Dr Selina Sutra a modern day meteorologist investigating climate change (seems to be a current hot topic in literature) and the presence of microplastics in our atmosphere which affect rain and cloud formation. There are other entertaining interludes from across the centuries. Some of these episodes are complete but several have open endings which made them more true to life for the reader.
Overall a most enjoyable book about an area I know and love as an added bonus.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2025

Review to follow

[alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

sublime and dreamy - mostly historical, blending climate-fiction with magical realism. expansive, experimental. i think this will stay with me for a while !

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely fabulous new book by Sarah Hall, in which she plays to her strengths as a short story writer. Helm is seven shorter books combined into one.

Our subject is the Helm, the only wind in the UK which is deserving of a name. It is a very specific wind which blows over the Pennines in Northern England, and in particular Cross Fell, the highest mountain in England which is outside the Lake District. This is where Hall lives and the area often features in her other novels.
What makes this so entertaining is that we see Helm through different centuries, starting way back in the Stone Age and coming right up to present times and the concerns of climate scientists. One on the narrators of the seven intermingled stories is Helm himself, and he has quite a sense of humour. At one point he reinvents the Beaufort wind scale for himself, giving indicators for the different stages and wind forces. From Gentle Helm, where Y-fronts lift on washing lines, through Fresh Helm which leads to the zesting of libidos, Storm Helm where dogs continually bark and whiskey is uncorked, to Hurricane Helm where the Eden Valley is reconfigured biblically, trains are lifted of the tracks and history is made.

Helm loves watching the various humans that come to live in the valley below, their antics and also their trinkets, shiny things that he loves to blow around. He watches the whole evolution from on high.

These humans are very entertaining. They entertain each other. They ferment drinks that make them silly and aggressive and lusty, they biff and boff and booze. Fantastic theatre.

Among the six other stories, narrated at different times, we move from the Neolithic to the medieval to the Victorian. After that the other three are all within living memory. The one that struck me most was the story of Janni, a girl in the 1950s or 60s. She is touched by madness and runs wild across the fells and talks directly with Helm. But then she is taken away and given medicine, treated for what is seen as her mental illness. When she returns home it is like she is broken, with no will of her own. The glorious spirit she had has been lost. The medication has robbed her of her like force. In one chapter she is left at home by her mother to carry out the menial chores around the farm. Helm knows she is there and begins to blow, but Janni has been told to never speak his name again.

But she cannot speak. She cannot remember what she wants to say and her tongue is a slug in salt. The wind is gathering all the air about her, sucking it from her lungs. What does it want? The washing basket is snatched from beside her feet and spun westwards past the gable. The garments dance faster and higher until the washing line snaps and the conical bras are freed. She must get inside quickly. She must not tarry. But her body is slow and broken, its muscles no longer depend on her mind; it is twice the effort to ask for cooperation. The door of the farm is slammed and locked; the coal shed is the only shelter. She wrestles the hatch door up and crawls inside, and shuts the hatch behind. She sits on a pile of limps in the coaly, dusty darkness, hands over her ears, eyes squeezed closed, mouth working madly.
Such a wailing has begun outside. Lamenting and ululating all around, like a song of grief, like praise for some primary deity. She is inside a beaten drum, inside the womb of a bomb. It is a rare storm, this one, a caterwauler; it will enter the annals. There is nothing this Helm can’t shift and shake, hurl and demolish…

Memory returns to Janni, she speaks the name of Helm and everything freezes. Helm hold the world perfectly still for her. There is wonderful description of the whole world frozen in time, the water droplets blown from the stream, the collapsing wall in gritty mid-tumble. Frozen to give Janni to climb to the top of the hill and reclaim her promise – that Helm would teach her to fly. This whole chapter of ten short pages is so intense and brilliant, it is quite overwhelming.

Helm has been shortlisted for this year’s Goldsmiths Prize in the UK, which celebrates creative daring which breaks the mould or extends the possibility of the novel. The award was deservedly won in 2023 by Ben Myers and his novel Cuddy, another romp through the centuries, that time set on the opposite northern English coastline. My personal view is that Helm is far better, but the judges may feel it is too similar to that past winner.

Tucked in the very bottom corner of the front cover is a maker’s mark which Hall designed. It says simply ‘Human Written’. A portentous sign of our times. A short note at the back of the book states: ‘The author has created a maker’s mark to assert the organic, biological, non-AI-generated nature of the novel’s creative composition and artistry. The author offers this as an affirmation of her craft.’ Have we really come to this, that in future we will have to designate which books are written by humans and which by machines?

I am conflicted now – this whole book is so good. Is it my best book of the year?

[Maven Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helm is the story of a wind, the eponymous Helm Wind given voice and life, tracing its presence from prehistory to the present while observing humanity’s changing relationship with nature through ages.

Nearly at the start I found myself swept into what feels like a kind of cosmic memory: the wind speaking, watching, remembering, longing. What struck me about Helm by Sarah Hall is how bravely she makes nature something so often in the background, so often taken for granted, the true protagonist. Through a tapestry of voices across time a Neolithic tribeswoman performing rites, a medieval exorcist, a Victorian engineer, a mid-20th century girl, and a modern-day climate scientist, the novel shows how people have tried to understand, worship, tame or study Helm. Hall doesn’t simply describe a wind’s power: she invests Helm with personality, history, even emotion playful, bemused, sometimes wrathful and makes us see how fragile and transitory human endeavors are beside the relentless, ancient elements.

At first reading, I felt a sense of wonder, here was something mythic but intimate, ancient yet immediate. As Helm observes minds and lives, beliefs and ambitions, I found myself pondering how fleeting our “modernity” really is when set against the long span of time. In particular, the strand focusing on the present, a scientist concerned that pollution might be eroding Helm’s power touched me: it gives the novel a quiet urgency, a melancholic awareness that perhaps the real tragedy is not what nature does to us, but what we might be doing to nature.

That said, and only because I want to be honest, the novel’s structure demands patience. Its mosaic of times and voices, its shifts from mythic language to scientific discourse, sometimes left me longing for a single, continuous storyline or deeper attachment to one character. But I also recognize that this fragmentation is part of the point: it’s about the many ways humans have tried and failed to contain what cannot be owned or controlled.

In sum, Helm left me reeling with beauty, sorrow, and awe. It made me consider our place in the world, and what it means to listen to the wind. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars because though its ambition and power are nearly unmatched, its demands on the reader sometimes outweigh its emotional rewards.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

HELM is not casual reading. If you prefer plots with everything neatly explained, settings that smoothly flow through time, and characters that are easily understood this would not be the novel for you. Instead, Hall gives us an ambitious, imaginative and intricate novel that uses objects, people, myths, religion, technology and science to explore how humans interact with the environment. These stories are never didactic but, in its place, they invite contemplation.

Hall uses multiple protagonists whose only link is an unusual wind current known as Helm. By treating Helm as an active narrative presence in her stories, she succeeds in creating a novel that distinguishes itself from more conventional historical or dystopic fiction. The settings roughly move through time from before the appearance of humans to a dystopic near future. Hall is not interested in depicting clear-cut heroes and villains. Instead, her characters are complex with uncertain motives. She gives us intelligent people who are driven and often damaged. Into this mix, Helm frequently appears with ironic and humorous reflections about the humans it finds to be quite curious.

This a not a plot-driven novel, however. Its loose connections between the various stories, the shifts in language and historical detail and the emotional distances of the protagonists combine to give the novel a fragmented feel that can be disorienting and demanding. Yet, Hall’s structure seems deliberate as it resists simplistic answers.

What these stories lack in cohesion, they more than make up for with vivid and atmospheric prose describing a harsh landscape characterized by demanding weather patterns, terrain, and machinery that present her characters with intense survival challenges. Notwithstanding these clear artistic strengths, the obliqueness and overarching opacity of the novel do present the reader with significant challenges in understanding Hall’s intentions. Also, the pace is slow, especially in the early scenes and the plots often seem to take back seats to mood and imagery.

[Katie Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, it had a complex structure jumping between timelines, but we were reading about a wind, so in essence all bets were off! I actually felt that there was almost not enough of the wind itself in there, I could have heard its voice more. The book spoke beautifully of the continuity of time and place and how a landscape lives and breathes all the events which take place on it. Powerful stuff especially as it came up to the present and our attempts to use technology to understand the wind and the effects man has on the environment. A book that just felt it tried to be a little too worthy to get a 5 star from me

[Rose]

I loved Burntcoatand was really looking forward to this. I was disappointed. I think that There Are Rivers in the Sky had a similar framing and much better internal storytelling.

[Madison Runser · Rating 1 out of 5]

The cover of this book drew me in, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping. Normally I enjoy books like this that include different perspectives across several time periods, but unfortunately this one didn’t land for me because the stories weren’t interesting. None of the characters are developed well, so I just didn’t care about any of them. I also wasn’t a fan of the combo of the wordy writing style and narrator, I don’t think they worked well together. Maybe I would have enjoyed this more as a physical book instead of audiobook, but I still think the lack of fleshed-out characters and an interesting plot would leave me wanting more.

[Heather Lake]

Full disclosure I skipped and skimmed through this book. The premise was interesting despite not being a book I’d pick up (book club pick) but immediately I was not a fan. The short paragraphs, Helm talking in first person and the overuse of the word ‘cue’ lost me. Followed a few stories through and the ending confirmed my decision to skim.

[Lindsay Andros · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 30%

This novel explores Helm, the ferocious wind and sort-of god that has been the master of England for millennia. I saw that this novel was on many Booker Prize predictions lists, and once I discovered that it was being compared to THE OVERSTORY and NORTH WOODS — two novels I loved very much — I was sold. I was absolutely thrilled to get my hands on an advance copy from NetGalley, and was so excited to begin reading over the weekend. As it happened, though, my hopes were quickly dashed.

I really hate to DNF books; this is only my second of 2025, despite promising myself that I would be better about letting books go when I just wasn’t feeling them. All of that to make it clear that in order for me to DNF a book, I really have to be not having a good time. I found that there was very little plot, which would have been totally fine because I love character-driven novels! But we don’t spend enough time with any character to really get to know them or develop any sort of attachment or understanding of their psyches. I also found the prose to be extremely confusing and dull; “slippery” is the only way I can think to describe it. It just didn’t work for me in any aspect.

I am fully prepared to admit that maybe this is all due to a part of myself that is lacking, whether it be my interest in these certain historical time periods or my overall intelligence; there do seem to be plenty of people who love it and who connected with it on some level. Either way, this book was definitely not for me.

[Simon S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helm is the UK’s only named wind, localised to the Cross Fell area of Cumbria. Notable for its distinctive rolling, turbulent cloud formations and its destructive force, it has, over time, gathered myth, legend, and scientific study among its many stories.
In this exceptional action-painting of a book, Sarah Hall shows us humanity’s humility and hubris in the face of nature.
From Helm’s perspective, we see the emergence of human society across the Cumbrian wilds: the coming together of tribes, their terror in the face of the crashing gales, and their development of “trinkets” (buildings, vehicles, furniture, clothing) – all toys for Helm’s wild pleasure.
As Helm observes and wonders, we follow a handful of story threads, spread across time, each with Helm at its core: something to be placated, subdued, or studied. Each thread offers glimpses into the society of its time and the oscillating positions of women and men, science and belief, hope and despair, exuberance and restraint.
Helm is an amused and bemused observer, fascinated by the couplings and carnage played out below. A neolithic society seeks the final stone for their circle; a medieval exorcist climbs the hill to cast out the destructive demon Helm; men of science try to study or tame the wild spirit in more secular fashion; and a lone voice from the weather station wonders whether Helm can survive the attrition of climate change.
I absolutely loved this book. Hall paints such vivid pictures with few words, capturing the firing of synapses, the crash-zoom and montage of people in motion, heads full of dreams. The book is funny – particularly Helm’s droll reflections – moving, and thrilling, and each thread has its own tone and reality, each a convincing and satisfying short story of its own. They twist around and through each other, accumulating into a vivid study of our relationship with the full force of nature, something we have battled for as long as we’ve existed – and which, even now, we cannot control, only break.