Andrew Miller has always been a bold writer, which often means avoiding the obvious or easy path. After the success of his historical novel, Pure, which won the 2011 Costa prize, readers might have expected him to produce something in a similar vein. Instead, he has returned to a contemporary setting for his seventh novel, The Crossing, and a protagonist even more at odds with her surroundings than Pure’s young engineer Baratte in pre-revolutionary France.
Tim and Maud meet at Bristol University’s sailing club; before their courtship has begun, Tim watches Maud fall 20ft on to concrete from the deck of a boat in dry dock, then – miraculously – stand and walk. In this moment she acquires a mythological status: “Who else has entered his life like that? Has entered his life with the force of myth?” ...