“Helm” ~ by Sarah Hall

After a turbulent start to June, it seems appropriate that this month’s book review touches on that peculiarly British fascination: the weather. The Helm is the UK’s only named wind, brought beautifully to life in Sarah Hall’s eponymous novel. The story weaves together the tales of six human characters and of the playful and curious Helm “helmself”, engagingly exploring the humans’ lives in relation to Helm, who looks on across their generations.

The blurb describes this as “Helm’s life story…” which intrigued me from the start, and in fact Helm’s story is indeed told both by helmself and through six characters at different points in history. Amongst others, the novel introduces us to a Victorian steam engineer seeking to experiment on the Helm to see how the wind forms; we meet a modern-day scientist trying to discover how microplastics affect weather conditions like the Helm; we have a child who simply loves to run along the hills with Helm, throwing sparkling sweet wrappers as gifts for Helm to play with. The book skips back and forth between centuries, even millennia, without losing either its thread or the reader.

Hall writes evocatively about the landscape and the environment, while allowing the characters to live and breathe their own stories, trials, and day-to-day concerns – as Helm continues to appear and disappear in response to prevailing climatic conditions. The novel investigates the human urge to discover and explore what nature holds, while reminding us of our frailty in the face of its implacable forces.

At a time when climate change is undeniably part of our lives, this book tackles the issue in a refreshingly human way. The Helm Wind has always existed, but even something so apparently permanent can be affected by human activity. While the novel reminds us of that fact, Helm doesn’t read like dystopian or disaster fiction, bringing instead an abiding message of hope.

This review was first published in July 2026 by Tewkesbury Direct.