A YEAR OF MARVELOUS WAYS

An elderly woman finds a serendipitous connection with a soldier in post–World War II Cornwall, England.

The 89-year-old Marvelous Ways is waiting for something, but she doesn’t know what. A woman guided by visions and dreams, she lives in the village of St. Ophere, where people have names like “Peace” and “Gladly” (and “Marvelous”). It’s 1947 and the village is slowly dying as people move away, but Marvelous remains, waiting. Francis Drake is a young solider who’s been traumatized by his experiences fighting in the war. He promised a dying comrade that he’d hand-deliver a letter to the man’s father in Cornwall, but it’s taken him nearly three years to find his way there. When Drake finally arrives, he’s almost immediately taken in by Marvelous Ways, who nurses him back to health after his long journey. Although Marvelous and Drake don’t have much in common on the surface, they develop a sweet friendship that’s largely based on Marvelous sharing stories from her eventful life. In her first novel since the bestselling Still Life (2021), Winman creates a magical world where Marvelous relies on intuition to guide her. The village of St. Ophere is beautifully described—readers can almost hear the waves and smell the mud and foliage that Marvelous frequently describes. While Marvelous’ life is full of heartbreaking beauty, Drake’s has more violence. The horrors he experienced in WWII leap off the page in their brutality. Winman’s prose is descriptive in a way that often feels lush, but can also be frustratingly opaque—at times, it’s difficult to understand what’s happening (the lack of quotation marks doesn’t help). But for readers who crave poetic language and plenty of metaphors, this dreamlike story may be just what they’re looking for.

A heartbreaking but redemptive story about an unlikely friendship.