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Helm
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.
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.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published August 28, 2025
481 people are currently reading
15774 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Hall
69 books675 followersLibrarian 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).
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).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 331 reviews
December 16, 2025
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/...
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/...
Want to read
May 31, 2025 "for readers of The Overstory and North Woods"
just take my money already
just take my money already
August 4, 2025
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.
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.
January 21, 2026
Shortlisted for the 2025 Goldsmiths Prize
Shortlisted 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:
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.
Shortlisted 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.
November 4, 2025
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:
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.
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.
August 3, 2025
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.
March 14, 2026
Helm is set in the Eden Valley in Cumbria revealing a landscape that has been shaped by the elements and by the people who’ve lived there over the centuries, leaving their mark by way of stone circles, roads, castles and railways.
Observing it all, since the dawn of time to the present day, is Helm, Britain’s only named wind. In the book Helm doesn’t just have a name, it has a voice, frequently addressing the reader directly. And it has a personality too: ferocious, mischievous, mercurial, occasionally vindictive, and a wry observer of human behaviour. It revels in its own power whilst at the same time bemoaning the fact that it often gets the blame for human mishaps, everything from headaches to flatulence. (Helm does have rather an obsession with bodily functions.) If you can’t get your head around the idea of an anthropomorphic wind, then this may not be the book for you.
The book features multiple storylines set in different historical periods ranging from Neolithic times to the present day. Through them, each of which are stylistically different, the author explores the interaction between humans and the natural world.
I’m going to focus on three storylines I particularly enjoyed. In the first a Neolithic tribe embark on the mammoth task of adding a huge monolith of red sandstone to a sacred stone circle (modelled on Long Meg and Her Daughters), enacting a vision revealed to its matriarch whilst she battled against a storm caused by Helm. Moving forward to the 13th century, a fanatical priest with a reputation for savagery, arrives in the area causing fear amongst its inhabitants. He views Helm as a demonic presence and, intent on exorcising it, undertakes a gruelling trek up the mountain from which the wind arises. And in the 1950s, a troubled, lonely young girl comes to regard Helm as a friend but this is viewed as evidence of mental disorder with tragic results.
A modern day storyline involves a scientist studying the increasing levels of microplastics in the atmosphere, something that may result in irreversible change to Helm. For me, this was the least engaging of the stories, partly because I found the character Dr Selima Sutar rather annoying and because its thriller-like tone seemed out of keeping with the theme of the book. I also thought it took up too much of the book.
Helm switches frequently between the various storylines, some of which have no neat resolution. Interspersed with these are lists – Helm’s own version of the Beaufort Scale, for example – diagrams, and descriptions of ‘trinkets’, objects that are souvenirs of Helm’s encounters with humans. Helm‘s stylistic inventiveness won’t appeal to every reader but it did, for the most part, to this one.
Observing it all, since the dawn of time to the present day, is Helm, Britain’s only named wind. In the book Helm doesn’t just have a name, it has a voice, frequently addressing the reader directly. And it has a personality too: ferocious, mischievous, mercurial, occasionally vindictive, and a wry observer of human behaviour. It revels in its own power whilst at the same time bemoaning the fact that it often gets the blame for human mishaps, everything from headaches to flatulence. (Helm does have rather an obsession with bodily functions.) If you can’t get your head around the idea of an anthropomorphic wind, then this may not be the book for you.
The book features multiple storylines set in different historical periods ranging from Neolithic times to the present day. Through them, each of which are stylistically different, the author explores the interaction between humans and the natural world.
I’m going to focus on three storylines I particularly enjoyed. In the first a Neolithic tribe embark on the mammoth task of adding a huge monolith of red sandstone to a sacred stone circle (modelled on Long Meg and Her Daughters), enacting a vision revealed to its matriarch whilst she battled against a storm caused by Helm. Moving forward to the 13th century, a fanatical priest with a reputation for savagery, arrives in the area causing fear amongst its inhabitants. He views Helm as a demonic presence and, intent on exorcising it, undertakes a gruelling trek up the mountain from which the wind arises. And in the 1950s, a troubled, lonely young girl comes to regard Helm as a friend but this is viewed as evidence of mental disorder with tragic results.
A modern day storyline involves a scientist studying the increasing levels of microplastics in the atmosphere, something that may result in irreversible change to Helm. For me, this was the least engaging of the stories, partly because I found the character Dr Selima Sutar rather annoying and because its thriller-like tone seemed out of keeping with the theme of the book. I also thought it took up too much of the book.
Helm switches frequently between the various storylines, some of which have no neat resolution. Interspersed with these are lists – Helm’s own version of the Beaufort Scale, for example – diagrams, and descriptions of ‘trinkets’, objects that are souvenirs of Helm’s encounters with humans. Helm‘s stylistic inventiveness won’t appeal to every reader but it did, for the most part, to this one.
November 30, 2025
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.
It took me some time to get into the book. It’s a novel that requires patience. But I did finally get there.
August 26, 2025
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.
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.
December 20, 2025
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!
Read
March 10, 2026This book has so many moving parts and they all sync up with a precision that amazed me. Which is not to say that this is an orderly book with tidy endings. How could it be when at center of it all is Helm, a powerful, wildly erratic force of nature who is also a 'character' of sorts in the book? I loved the way Hall embodied Helm; Helm 'speaks' through a third person narrator that is such a close and sensitive observer of Helm it's really more like an interpreter. The book starts in this "Helmspeak" voice:
This last quotation hints at the various characters' attitudes toward Helm: NaNay the neolithic visionary; Michael Lang the medieval fanatical Christian; Thomas Bodger the devotee of the new science of meteorology who thinks man can harness Helm's energy; Janni the (schizophrenic?) child who believes Helm is her only friend and will teach her to fly; Salima Sutar, a scientist measuring the microplastics that may be the death of Helm: "At what point do cloud borne plastics become plastic clouds?"
These characters all have stories and trajectories that take fascinating turns and although they couldn't be more different, there are easter eggs and echoes that link them. Tracing them all could fill a dissertation. The stories aren't presented chronologically - we weave in and out of them in very short chapters, which makes the links more immediate.
Lastly, I want to pay tribute to the vividness of Hall's writing with some examples:
NaNay and her family are hunkered down in their hut in as Halron [Helm] rages:"....they listen to the Halron splintering and shredding the valley, its voice mourning its own violence."
Of Michael Lang, she writes: The terrible motor of his black heart drives him."
Of Janni, sent to a psychiatric hospital: "It is the room you were put inside at Garlands, where the doctors said you were wrongly wired; something in your brain was loose and flapping in its own chaos, some upsetting thing must be removed."
Salima observes cyclist on the mountain: "Halfway down Great Dun, she whizzes past a cyclist muscling up, dressed in skintight green-and-black Lycra, wraparound goggles and a sculpted helmet. Head down, concentrating. He looks like an amphibian, clammy and cooked. Good afternoooon, she calls cheerily.
Helm doesn't know when Helm was born.A little further on the page:
Or brewed.
Conjured or conceived.
First formed above the highest mountain.
First blown into the valley.
Long before humankind - that brief, busy interlude.
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. So many identities and personalities; it makes Helm's heads spin.
This last quotation hints at the various characters' attitudes toward Helm: NaNay the neolithic visionary; Michael Lang the medieval fanatical Christian; Thomas Bodger the devotee of the new science of meteorology who thinks man can harness Helm's energy; Janni the (schizophrenic?) child who believes Helm is her only friend and will teach her to fly; Salima Sutar, a scientist measuring the microplastics that may be the death of Helm: "At what point do cloud borne plastics become plastic clouds?"
These characters all have stories and trajectories that take fascinating turns and although they couldn't be more different, there are easter eggs and echoes that link them. Tracing them all could fill a dissertation. The stories aren't presented chronologically - we weave in and out of them in very short chapters, which makes the links more immediate.
Lastly, I want to pay tribute to the vividness of Hall's writing with some examples:
NaNay and her family are hunkered down in their hut in as Halron [Helm] rages:"....they listen to the Halron splintering and shredding the valley, its voice mourning its own violence."
Of Michael Lang, she writes: The terrible motor of his black heart drives him."
Of Janni, sent to a psychiatric hospital: "It is the room you were put inside at Garlands, where the doctors said you were wrongly wired; something in your brain was loose and flapping in its own chaos, some upsetting thing must be removed."
Salima observes cyclist on the mountain: "Halfway down Great Dun, she whizzes past a cyclist muscling up, dressed in skintight green-and-black Lycra, wraparound goggles and a sculpted helmet. Head down, concentrating. He looks like an amphibian, clammy and cooked. Good afternoooon, she calls cheerily.
November 19, 2025
⇝
4.5 stars
February 18, 2026
I wasn’t underwhelmed. I wasn’t overwhelmed. I was just “helmed.”
March 7, 2026
This took a while to get going for me but once I settled in to all the various narratives it got its hooks into me nicely.
I keep thinking of Withnail and I expecting pastoral peace in the North and getting cultural hostility instead; “Not the attitude I'd been given to expect from the H.E. Bates novel I'd read”… and every time they name this town I hear “PEN! RITH!” in shouty tones.
Anyway. There seem to be a lot of these types of episodic, era-spanning literary novels at the moment, weirdly about nature and the landscape (I’m thinking There are rivers in the sky, North Woods, Cuddy, etc. I’ve even read it recently in graphic form on Will McPhail’s incredible Here, which is just… spine tingly and amazing. Ignore the movie adaptation it looks appalling). Did this happen all the time before David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten? There must be a predecessor…
I was also reminded of Max Porter’s Lanny, with its anthropomorphised natural phenomena and constant undertone of threat from the wildness of nature. Her style is wonderful and if anyone can make a wind interesting it’s she.
I keep thinking of Withnail and I expecting pastoral peace in the North and getting cultural hostility instead; “Not the attitude I'd been given to expect from the H.E. Bates novel I'd read”… and every time they name this town I hear “PEN! RITH!” in shouty tones.
Anyway. There seem to be a lot of these types of episodic, era-spanning literary novels at the moment, weirdly about nature and the landscape (I’m thinking There are rivers in the sky, North Woods, Cuddy, etc. I’ve even read it recently in graphic form on Will McPhail’s incredible Here, which is just… spine tingly and amazing. Ignore the movie adaptation it looks appalling). Did this happen all the time before David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten? There must be a predecessor…
I was also reminded of Max Porter’s Lanny, with its anthropomorphised natural phenomena and constant undertone of threat from the wildness of nature. Her style is wonderful and if anyone can make a wind interesting it’s she.
June 2, 2025
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.
September 19, 2025
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.
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.
October 31, 2025
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2025
Review to follow
Review to follow
January 9, 2026
Ratings:
Writing 5
Story line 4
Characters 4
Impact/enjoyment 4
Overall rating 4.25
Writing 5
Story line 4
Characters 4
Impact/enjoyment 4
Overall rating 4.25
Read
February 7, 2026“Such is human history, its past and future - gloriously imagined, occasionally heroic, often anticlimactic.”
4.5⭐️
4.5⭐️
November 28, 2025
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.
January 1, 2026
Author Sarah Hall put a “Human Written” maker’s mark on her novel Helm as a statement against the use of AI in books: https://lithub.com/human-written-why-...
While I completely agree with her stance and I think it’s a devastating indicator of where we’re at that such a statement would be needed, it’s mildly amusing to me that this book was chosen to bear that emblem simply because there’s absolutely no way that any robot could have written a novel as strange and existential and experimental and beautiful and *human* as this one.
Hełm is named for (and frequently narrated by) the Helm wind which gusts over the Cross Fell escarpment in Cumbria in the UK, observing and interacting with the many, many people who have lived there over millennia. These characters, from the neolithic to the contemporary, share the commonality of their location and of the way that Helm impacts them in various ways.
The novel reminds me a bit of Daniel Mason’s North Woods in the way it connects such disparate groups as a neolithic tribe, a Medieval shaman, and a modern scientist studying microplastics through their connection to place and nature. It’s wonderfully experimental and beautifully written, dancing between centuries and sweeping the pages along as though they’re being blown by the wind it centers. A stunning work of climate and nature fiction, and a richly human one.
While I completely agree with her stance and I think it’s a devastating indicator of where we’re at that such a statement would be needed, it’s mildly amusing to me that this book was chosen to bear that emblem simply because there’s absolutely no way that any robot could have written a novel as strange and existential and experimental and beautiful and *human* as this one.
Hełm is named for (and frequently narrated by) the Helm wind which gusts over the Cross Fell escarpment in Cumbria in the UK, observing and interacting with the many, many people who have lived there over millennia. These characters, from the neolithic to the contemporary, share the commonality of their location and of the way that Helm impacts them in various ways.
The novel reminds me a bit of Daniel Mason’s North Woods in the way it connects such disparate groups as a neolithic tribe, a Medieval shaman, and a modern scientist studying microplastics through their connection to place and nature. It’s wonderfully experimental and beautifully written, dancing between centuries and sweeping the pages along as though they’re being blown by the wind it centers. A stunning work of climate and nature fiction, and a richly human one.
December 30, 2025
Helm is the wind, a very distinct and powerful wind. Located high above Cumbria, it has uniquely 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.
December 30, 2025
4.5 stars but close to five. This is brilliant. So original, engaging, intelligent and playful. I enjoyed all the narrative strands including that of the Helm wind itself. Jenna’s story moved me the most and she seemed the most in-tune with Helm yet she is misunderstood, maligned and mistreated.
The only reason for the half star drop was because I would have liked a little more of a satisfactory resolution of at least a couple of the story strands which all seemed instead to peter out or remain hanging in the air. I appreciate that this was probably deliberate and in keeping with a story centred around an intangible natural phenomenon.
Fans of Benjamin Myers’ work, especially Cuddy, will likely love this novel as, I think, will those who enjoyed Daniel Mason’s North Woods.
The only reason for the half star drop was because I would have liked a little more of a satisfactory resolution of at least a couple of the story strands which all seemed instead to peter out or remain hanging in the air. I appreciate that this was probably deliberate and in keeping with a story centred around an intangible natural phenomenon.
Fans of Benjamin Myers’ work, especially Cuddy, will likely love this novel as, I think, will those who enjoyed Daniel Mason’s North Woods.
January 23, 2026
Vjerovatno ću zapamtiti da je ovo prva knjiga u kojoj sam našao Human Written certifikat kojim autorka zvanično i eksplicitno potvrđuje da roman ne sadrži dijelove koje je generisala umjetna inteligencija. Ne znam da li će se ovako nešto ustaliti u knjigama, sasvim je moguće da hoće, ali neki malo ciničniji komentator sada bi rekao da možda ne bi bilo loše da je autorka povremeno koristila pomoć AI. Teško da bi rezultat bio lošiji od ovoga. Šalu na stranu, knjiga nije toliko loša da se može porediti sa nekakvim robotskim tvorevinama, ali moj utisak definitivno ne prati entuzijazam iz preporuka koje su me dovele do ovog čitanja.
Helm je hladan, povremeno olujan vjetar koji se javlja u Kambriji, na sjeverozapadu Engleske. Ovo je, inače, rodni kraj autorke, koja u ovom romanu prati pokušaje ljudi od predistorije do naših dana da ovu prirodnu pojavu sebi objasne, na nju nekako utiču i vjetar stave pod svoju kontrolu. U skladu sa dominantnim obrascima interakcije čovjeka sa prirodom u raznim epohama, prvo pratimo magijske pokušaje žene-vrača iz neolitskog plemena, potom vjersko-mistične obrede sveštenika-čarobnjaka iz srednjeg vijeka, zatim pozitivistička i naučna djela pionira meteorologije iz viktorijanskog doba i, konačno, doktorantice sa univerziteta iz naših dana.
Relativno kratka poglavlja sa ova četiri toka radnje u knjizi se smjenjuju sa još nekim sporednim rukavcima i zajedno tvore priču o čovjeku i prirodi kroz epohe. Jasan centralni element neukrotivog vjetra obezbjeđuje određenu narativnu koherentnost, ali utisak je da prevelika udaljenost četiri vodeće priče, ali i njihov stilski i jezički tretman, ipak stvaraju preveliku unutrašnju neravnotežu zbog koje ne mogu reći da mi se knjiga dopada. Konkretno, priča o viktorijanskom meteorologu i, posebno, ona o njegovoj koleginici iz našeg vremena, bile su mi zanimljive i intrigantne. S druge strane, dva toka radnje iz davne i pradavne prošlosti djelovala su patetično i stilski izafektirano, skoro kao da je neko djelo žanrovske književnosti u pitanju. Nažalost, knjiga ne ostavlja utisak uspješne književno-umjetničke cjeline.
Prije početka čitanja plašilo me je to što roman nosi odrednicu ekološki, ali moram priznati da u knjizi nema didaktičnosti. S druge strane, kada je ideologija u pitanju, postoji određen problem sa prenaglašenim ženskim principom u knjizi - žene su pokretači i nosioci radnje u najvećem dijelu knjige. Naravno, dobro napisan ekološko-feministički roman ne bi bio nikakav problem. Problem je što ovaj roman nije u cjelini dobro napisan.
Helm je hladan, povremeno olujan vjetar koji se javlja u Kambriji, na sjeverozapadu Engleske. Ovo je, inače, rodni kraj autorke, koja u ovom romanu prati pokušaje ljudi od predistorije do naših dana da ovu prirodnu pojavu sebi objasne, na nju nekako utiču i vjetar stave pod svoju kontrolu. U skladu sa dominantnim obrascima interakcije čovjeka sa prirodom u raznim epohama, prvo pratimo magijske pokušaje žene-vrača iz neolitskog plemena, potom vjersko-mistične obrede sveštenika-čarobnjaka iz srednjeg vijeka, zatim pozitivistička i naučna djela pionira meteorologije iz viktorijanskog doba i, konačno, doktorantice sa univerziteta iz naših dana.
Relativno kratka poglavlja sa ova četiri toka radnje u knjizi se smjenjuju sa još nekim sporednim rukavcima i zajedno tvore priču o čovjeku i prirodi kroz epohe. Jasan centralni element neukrotivog vjetra obezbjeđuje određenu narativnu koherentnost, ali utisak je da prevelika udaljenost četiri vodeće priče, ali i njihov stilski i jezički tretman, ipak stvaraju preveliku unutrašnju neravnotežu zbog koje ne mogu reći da mi se knjiga dopada. Konkretno, priča o viktorijanskom meteorologu i, posebno, ona o njegovoj koleginici iz našeg vremena, bile su mi zanimljive i intrigantne. S druge strane, dva toka radnje iz davne i pradavne prošlosti djelovala su patetično i stilski izafektirano, skoro kao da je neko djelo žanrovske književnosti u pitanju. Nažalost, knjiga ne ostavlja utisak uspješne književno-umjetničke cjeline.
Prije početka čitanja plašilo me je to što roman nosi odrednicu ekološki, ali moram priznati da u knjizi nema didaktičnosti. S druge strane, kada je ideologija u pitanju, postoji određen problem sa prenaglašenim ženskim principom u knjizi - žene su pokretači i nosioci radnje u najvećem dijelu knjige. Naravno, dobro napisan ekološko-feministički roman ne bi bio nikakav problem. Problem je što ovaj roman nije u cjelini dobro napisan.
September 28, 2025
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.
January 8, 2026
Engrossing and engaging, Helm follows the life of the wind unique to the Eden Valley across a series of centuries, watching how different people engage and interact with it.
Read
December 6, 2025A very unfortunate DNF...
Did not finish
March 12, 2026She’s got style but she’s too disjointed for me to hang on to. A shame! Stopped ~p.150
October 16, 2025
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.
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.
October 29, 2025
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.
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