Wintering was published on the eve of the pandemic in February 2020. It was perfect timing for a book that explores the “winters” of life – not just the literal seasonal cold stretch, but those fallow periods in which things aren’t sunny; when illness, sadness, grief or other circumstances turn life upside down, or render it empty and quiet.
That the book came out just before a period of what was, for many, mandated hibernation has probably fed its success – we lurched towards banana bread recipes and home workout videos in the same way, trying to make the most of being stuck indoors. But the book’s continued resonance (this month saw it get a special hardback edition) speaks to a deeper, but maybe secret, recognition that hibernating from “normal life” is at times necessary. And Katherine May pushes it a step further: we should embrace these quieter, lower periods as part of a circular, rather than linear, timeline. “Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible,” she writes.
It’s perhaps a rebellion against the loud brand of self-help that puts consistency above everything else (Atomic Habits by James Clear has long held a seat on bestseller lists). May’s point is instead that life ebbs and flows. Her cosier advice feels like it belongs to the same family as books about hygge, the Danish concept encouraging us to focus on simple pleasures – warm lighting, wool socks, jumpers – that has also drawn in many readers: The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking has sold more than a million copies.
These books often put forward reading as an important act of hibernation in itself. The Art of Rest by Claudia Hammond is based on a survey of 18,000 people living in 135 countries which found reading voted the No 1 most restful activity. A somewhat surprising result, given you need to expend mental energy to do it. But it does make sense, Hammond writes: unlike watching TV, readers control the emotions experienced by speeding up, slowing down, pausing or closing the book if the story gets too scary or upsetting.
And because books take longer to finish than a movie, they can become a comforting constant. “I’m such a slow reader of novels that my immersion in the world of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides has continued over a couple of years,” Hammond writes. “Yet every time I go back to it, I experience a warm feeling of return. I am now familiar with this other world, in which I go with the flow of events and forget my other worries.” For her part, May finds she escapes into children’s books “at times like these”, when she’s “yearning to escape into a world that is beautifully rendered and complex, and yet also soothingly familiar”.
Photograph: Olga Yastremska/Alamy
