Maggie O'Farrell will launch her new novel Land in the woods at Wasing on Tuesday, hosting a reading and a conversation to mark the book’s first public outing.
The event, run by Hungerford Bookshop, opens with O'Farrell in conversation with Hannah MacInnes and follows with a reading, a Q&A and live music, plus food and drink for attendees. Copies sold at the event will carry a stamped author signature exclusive to the Land tour.
That combination of author talk, music and signed copies is the weight of the evening: a chance for readers to hear O'Farrell speak about a new novel that is explicitly tied to place. Land is described as a story about love, resilience, family and place and is framed by an inspiration drawn from the wild landscape of Ireland.
Contextually, launching a book about Ireland’s raw terrain in an English woodland is a neat fit rather than a mismatch. Wasing is presented as a venue shaped by its history, land and community, and the organisers have chosen the estate’s woods as a setting meant to echo the book’s themes of rootedness and the natural world.
Still, the set-up contains a friction that will be of interest to readers: Land’s provenance in the Irish landscape is clear, yet the first public encounter with the book will happen under an English canopy. That contrast—an Ireland‑inspired story introduced in Wasing’s woods—frames what the evening will be about as much as any excerpt or explanation.
Practical details for those planning to attend are simple and deliberate. Hungerford Bookshop is hosting; the programme begins with an onstage conversation between O'Farrell and MacInnes, then moves to a reading, an audience Q&A and music. Food and drink will be available on site, and the tour‑exclusive stamped signature will be applied to copies bought at the event.
For readers who know O'Farrell’s work, the launch places Land against a familiar catalogue. O'Farrell has nine Sunday Times bestselling novels and the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am behind her. Her novel After You'd Gone won the Betty Trask Award, and The Hand That First Held Mine took the 2010 Costa Novel Award—credentials that underline why a live reading and discussion will draw interest.
The programme’s structure points to what the night will deliver: an authorial framing of the book followed by audience questions, and moments of atmosphere supplied by music and food. The conversation with Hannah MacInnes will be the evening’s hinge—where O'Farrell is expected to outline Land’s ties to place, family and resilience before moving to more specific passages in the reading.
What the schedule does not supply in advance is a catalogue of the specifics fans crave—particular scenes, character revelations or which passages she will select for the reading. Those will be the discoveries reserved for the room, the reading and the Q&A; the event is built to reveal the details of Land in person rather than on a programme note.
If you want to hear exactly how Ireland shaped the novel—how its wild landscapes entered the book’s language and the lives of its characters—you will need to be at Wasing on Tuesday. The conversation with MacInnes, the reading and the Q&A are where O'Farrell is set to unpack the book’s relationship to place, and where copies stamped with the exclusive tour signature will be available to take home.
The Wasing launch is the next confirmed step on the book’s public life: a deliberately atmospheric opening that asks readers to consider Land first in a live setting, surrounded by trees and an audience, rather than in a purely urban or conventional bookshop space.
