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A Spell of Winter: WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

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My grandfather had turned my parents into shadows, and, as far as I knew, everybody had agreed to it. It wasn’t, for me, a satisfactory conclusion, though I felt the book a worthwhile read regardless, and enjoyed engaging with its themes.

I willed the snow to lie for ever, and I turned over and buried my head under the pillow so as not to hear the chuckle and drip of thaw…. Cathy and her older brother Rob grow up without their parents on an estate in rural England in the early 20th century.Generally it's a somber and melancholic story that slowly unwinds to create some intriguing yet emotionally consuming twists (it's not for the faint hearted! A Spell of Winter is set during the early years of the twentieth century, during the period before, during and immediately after the First World War. I wanted the thermometer to drop lower and lower until not even a trace of mercury showed against the figures.

For the most part this is a beautiful book and a pleasure to read, despite a slightly melodramatic middle part. Parts of it are good - her writing style is gorgeous in places, tedious in others - and frankly, I just had a hard time keeping up with what the hell was going on. Alone in their grandfather's decaying country house, they roam the wild grounds freely with minds attuned to the rural wilderness. My critical work includes introductions to the poems of Emily Brontë, the short stories of D H Lawrence and F Scott Fitzgerald, a study of Virginia Woolf’s relationships with women and Introductions to the Folio Society's edition of Anna Karenina and to the new Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy's My Confession.No one means Cathy ill, and their own motives are generally good and reasonable, but the girl is deeply hurt by all of them. The exception being her reaction to birthing and losing a baby, which is buried in some unknown plot of land on the family property. Incarcerated in the enormous country house of their grandfather - 'the man from nowhere' - they create a refuge against their family's dark secrets, and against the outside world as it moves towards the First World War. I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland. Raised by an emotionally distant grandfather with particular ideas for their futures and by overly-involved house staff, Cathy and Rob form a close bond- perhaps too close- that causes further emotional fracturing as the two finally reach adulthood and gain a wider sense of the world than they had ever known in the manor.

And that means there are no emotional stakes for me, just a constructness where the workings are too visible. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.The synopsis on the cover (and on Goodreads) offers little in the way of what to expect, and I can see where not knowing what you’re getting into here could lead to less than favorable experiences for some readers, though the right audience will find this a gorgeous (if grim) book. Also, it won the Orange Prize in 1996, so someone with literary power obviously thought it was good, too. Catherine and her brother Rob do not understand why they have been abandoned by both their parents, or know where their mother has gone. It's not a perfect book, but I loved it--stories with this kind of emotional heft, without melodrama, are hard to find.

I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.With her sumptuous use of words, she evokes a rich, gothic setting, and a quietly sinister and claustrophobic atmosphere that I adored.

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