Could anyone recommend a Wintery or Christmassy novel for book club, please?

[ArtisticGina]

For my next book club, we've agreed to all nominate a wintery or Christmassy feeling book to read over the festive period. But I have no ideas.

It doesn't have to be set at Christmas or in winter. It just needs to be the kind of book you can curl up with on dark winter nights, something you can really get lost in.

We're into quiet literary fiction so nothing too vapid or feel good 😅I'm not after a Christmas-movie-just-in-book-form type of novel.

I think The Luminaries would be perfect but I've read it already.
Do you have any recommendations, please?

A Christmas Carol! Perfection.

Winter Solstice by Rosamund Pilcher.

One of my favourite reads this year was “A woman in the polar night” by Christianne Ritter. It was written in the 1930s about a year she spent on an island in the Arctic circle. It was fascinating and very atmospheric. Definitely made me want to curl under a blanket as I was reading!

I got lost in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and The Sea of Tranquillity (third book in the Station Eleven trilogy) - are either of those any good?

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

Small things like these - Claire Keegan

@TotalOverhaul Agree The Goldfinch would excellent but I've read it already

@Optimist1 Interesting suggestion. I've tried three times to read that book but never quite clicked with it, I don't know why.

Other suggestions are great - I'm off to Google them all!!

Agree with Small Things Like These.
or The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Non fiction, Sarah Moss’ book about living in Iceland. Names for the Sea.

Call of the Wild - classic
A Cold Day for Murder - set in Alaskan national park, native female protagonist

This is beautiful. I read it when I was young but still enjoy a re-read....

The Christmas Mystery (Christmas Fiction) https://amzn.eu/d/eH2RM6B

Also, cannot recommend highly enough Wintering by Katherine May. Just beautiful.

And if you are feeling like embracing your inner child. Moominland Midwinter (A Puffin Book) https://amzn.eu/d/9L93Fpp

I think it is for grown ups too. I sort of love winter. I think it's in my northerness. 😊

The Snow Child -Eowyn Ivey , beautiful and lots of snow !

Ooh I’m placemarking this! I’d like a nice wintery/Christmassy novel to snuggle down with 🥰

Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback was a big hit for my book club a few winters back. It's very atmospheric.

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk - not all of it is in winter but there are some very snowy bits.

And a bit more lightweight Hercule Poirot's Christmas!

The Box of Delights, John Masefield

A proper family Christmas by Jane Gorden-Cumming ...light heart and fun.
The Christmas shoes....lovely but a bit of a teary one though.

@truetruebarneymcgrew I read "A Proper Family Christmas" several years ago - me and SIL agreed to read it t the same time like a weird mini-book club. It was so so bad 😅

Midnight in Everwood. Not the greatest book ever written, but a light read to take you from spooky season into Christmas. No one has the headspace to think too hard at this time of year.

I nominate Spinning Silver by Novik - fresh take on a winter fairy tale.
Or The Dark is Rising.

Some great suggestions.

I came on to suggest Wintering.... a friend told me I should read it in winter , I think we might be there.

Is the Snow Child the one set in Alaska? And sort of a fairytale?

Corrag. - It is beautiful

I second Jostein Gaarder’s A Christmas Mystery, and raise you Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm. Stella Gibbons is still hilarious now, and fits your quiet literary bent very well.

The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse - under 200 pages so a slim one for her but really beautifully written!

Placemarking for all the good suggestions.

Another vote for The Snow Child

I don’t love Daphne du Maurier and certainly didn’t love Jamaica Inn (which I have just listened to on audible). But it is literary, or at least “a classic” and there is a pivotal event which happens at Christmas.

(I often find book group discussions work just as well, when you don’t love the look as when you do.)

I loved Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, mentioned above. Not Christmassy, but lots of wintery bits, and lots of good themes to discuss.