Three dachshunds, two women and a windmill…

I’ve just read Windmill Hill by Lucy Atkins without having any idea what to expect as I have not encountered her work before. What I discovered was a very clever narrative. The novel centres on eighty-two-year-old former RSC actress, Astrid Miller, who has lived for decades in a dilapidated windmill in East Sussex. Both Astrid and the windmill have intriguing histories. Her companion of twenty years, Mrs Baker, deals with the practical details of their lives, and they are accompanied by a sequence of miniature dachshunds all named after gin. The present canines, Hendricks, Juniper and Gordon, are as almost as much characters as the older women.

They are haunted by the spectre of Lady Constance Battiscombe, the previous owner, of the windmill, but both women have their own personal spectres to manage. Astrid sometimes imagines she sees her ex-husband, Magnus, who, following a scandal and a divorce, went on to become a Hollywood star. She can never forgive him, but for what? The ‘action’ of the novel is triggered following a visit from a young woman who is ghost-writing Magnus’s memoirs. Astrid takes the decision to travel to Scotland to confront him, knowing he is dying of cancer, to insist that he removes her from the book. But interwoven with this plotline are all the back stories, of Astrid’s life, of Mrs Baker’s, the dogs, and others. Layered within these, Constance’s letters give an insight in the troubles she faced in the 1920s.

What I enjoyed most about this novel was the narrative structure – although the story is obviously good too. It is almost entirely focalised around the consciousness of Astrid, who is not in the best health and has a tendency to ramble. There are a lot of narrative strands, all woven together in a manner that seems to reflect Astrid’s own anxiety and confusion. The real authorial cleverness lies in the fact that while we see this confusion, we do not share it. Atkins catapults us between story lines without chronology or order, as Astrid’s shaky mind tries to understand everything that has brought her to this journey. These intersecting stories enable Atkins to drip feed the reader with information. What exactly did happen at the Tudor Manor house? What was the Awful Incident? Where exactly did Gordon come from?  We are kept guessing until the final chapters. Well, not necessarily about Gordon.

Added to this, while the novel deals with some deep and disturbing issues, particularly around the history of women being silenced by men, there is still a lightness of tone as we enter the world of the old windmill, with its secret tunnel linking to the cottage. And perhaps most captivating of all, it is a novel about sisterhood, that invites us to understand that sometimes the most important relationships in life are not the ones we expect.