The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
Goodness. This book takes place in the early 1960s in an English village during a very long winter. You get to know two neighboring couples, both of whose wives are pregnant. One husband is a doctor, the other a farmer. They reckon with post war and personal issues and more is revealed about how the characters are related as the story unfolds. I thought it was beautifully written with all kinds of symbolism in certain scenes, some of which didn’t dawn on me until days later. It was one of those books where I read the ending twice because I almost couldn’t catch my breath the first time. And then I went back and reread the first pages, including the epigraph at the beginning. This includes is a quote from a Jean-Luc Godard film and a nice reminder not to overlook the author’s cinema references when thinking back on the book, which I am still doing almost week later!