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

Product Information

Her best known works include the novels Zennor in Darkness, A Spell of Winter and The Siege, and her last book of poetry Inside the Wave. She won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction, the National Poetry Competition, and posthumously the Costa Book Award. [3] Biography [ edit ] Outstanding. The plot unfolds with both tension and inevitability as Dunmore plays off past against present, rubs together contemporary themes of urban corruption with far-off memories of taboo passion' Sunday Telegraph

Because of this, and also the beauty of the prose, it reminded me very much of To the Lighthouse, which I loved the first time for its revelations, but found frustratingly hard to follow on my second read. It also reminded me of The Awakening. Like those books, this is about observations and relationships and development and the impact of trauma.McCrum, Robert (10 June 2001). "The Siege is a novel for now". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 17 March 2014 . Retrieved 7 June 2009.

British Orange Prize–winning Dunmore ( With Your Crooked Heart, 2000, etc.) mixes the spirits of T. Hardy, E. Bronte, and D. H. Lawrence to offer up a country tale of loss, madness, and deep secrecy—all with a vividness that’s luscious and unflagging. In March 2017, she published her last novel, Birdcage Walk, as well as an article about mortality for The Guardian written after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. [6] She died on 5 June 2017. [1] [7] [8] [9] Her final poetry collection Inside the Wave, published in April 2017 shortly before her death, posthumously won the Poetry and overall Book of the Year awards in the 2017 Costa Book Awards. [10] [11] Personal life [ edit ] Dunmore was born in Beverley, Yorkshire, in 1952, the second of four children of Betty ( née Smith) and Maurice Dunmore.This was the first winner of the Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize for Fiction), and I found it very impressive. The atmosphere and setting reminded me of a couple of my favourite William Trevor novels ( Fools of Fortune and The Story of Lucy Gault - they share the decaying country house settings and the Anglo-Irish family settings, and they share the elegiac tone with darker overtones and the quality of the writing. Blood seeped rustily out of me…. I thought I would never stop bleeding” (189). These are the words of Cathy after her abortion. Blood is mentioned numerous times in the text. Give more examples. Why did the author choose blood as a definitive symbol? At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel. A Spell of Winter is one of those novels that pulls you in with its secrets and sense of impending doom. Cathy’s intensity, her determination and her desire for things to stay the same add tension. But then all the characters are strongly drawn often with contradictory aspects to their character – the maid, Kate, is impulsive but wise; Miss Gallagaher can be rigid about rules but is also sentimental. Her most recent prize shortlisting, in 2006, was for the Nestlé Smarties book prize for children's fiction, with The Tide Knot, the second volume in a quartet of children's novels set, like Zennor, on the glittering, mysterious Cornish coast. The move into adult fiction in no way derailed her desire to write for children; in fact, she says, "It's something that's actually become more important in the last half-dozen years. Children are a completely different audience, and I enjoy that. There's something about the way they devour books that's wonderful; you don't get many fans of adult fiction sending you beautiful drawings of your characters. And it frees you to layer on the suspense and narrative drama – to create lots of worlds, real and unreal, and move into them. But at the same time, it's just the same as adult fiction in terms of the emotions. It's not milk and water."

The author makes great use of closed spaces: the "snow-house" where the first incestuous union occurs (p. 99); the little "cottage" where the abortion takes place (p. 185); the tiny "clearing" where Miss Gallagher dies (p. 203). What relation do these physical landscapes have to the country estate? How do they correspond to the emotional landscape of the characters? Can you think of other enclosed spaces to which the author might be alluding? Helen Dunmore – Literature". British Council Literature. Archived from the original on 4 January 2018 . Retrieved 6 June 2017. One of the most beautiful women ever to grace the silver screen, Hedy Lamarr also designed a secret weapon against Nazi Germany.Mostly the children run wild in the woods and there is a sense of nature, both bounteous and grisly in Dunmore’s atmospheric setting where images of violence against small animals recur. Miss Gallagher fears for Cathy, as does her grandfather, and at seventeen, Cathy is introduced to Mr Bullivant, the wealthy new owner of the neighbouring estate who is fresh from Italy. He collects art, is pleasant company and knows Cathy’s mother. He also worries about Cathy and encourages her to leave and see the world, but she would rather stay at home with her grandfather. Throughout the text, the reader encounters graphic descriptions of smells-numerous flowers, perspiring bodies, dry rot, lemons, the fresh sweat of a horse, and so on. What literary purpose do these all these olfactory references serve? When telling Cathy a story about their father, Rob says: “I remember…because when I came in you were sitting by the fire and room smelled of rosemary” (p. 111). Clearly, smells assist (and can trigger) memory. What else boosts memory in this story and why is it so important? Comparing herself to the beautiful Livvy, a dowdier Cathy thinks: "I was too like my mother. My face made people think of the things men and women did together in the dark" (p. 66). What does she mean? What kind of face forces people into shame? Contrast this with the shame that Miss Gallagher attempts to stir up in people. Death of Novelist Helen Dunmore Announced". Foyles. 5 June 2017. Archived from the original on 8 June 2017.

This novel was the first winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996. I bought it after the book blogger Simon Savidge and his wonderful mother, Louise Savidge, started reading past winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction. The Orange Prize became the Bailey's Prize in 2012 and after 2017, the Women's Prize for Fiction. For the past two years, I have read a number of the longlisted titles, and look forward to the nominations and awards. Set largely in the build up to WWI, the story is narrated by Catherine, a young woman who feels increasingly cut off from the outside world. Abandoned by her mother as a child, embarrassed by the mental breakdown of her father that led to his hospitalisation, and ignored by the grandfather who finds too much pain in her resemblance to his absent daughter, she clings to her brother, Rob, for comfort. Hunkering down for the winter in their secluded, crumbling mansion, their mutual misplaced need for love takes their relationship down a dark and dangerous path that will pit them against the few who remain close to them. Did it take chutzpah, to put words in the mouth of one of her literary heroes? Not really, she says: their story needed to be told. "We know the bare bones of what happened – but what was it like for him and Frieda in this landscape? The details intrigued me: Lawrence creating a garden, growing things like salsify, getting in tons of manure. He knew how to do practical things – the ironing, the washing – and his combination of day-to-day good sense and the life of the mind fascinated me. I felt there were some interesting things about that particular period and about what turned him against England." A] dark, poetic and deftly crafted Gothic novel . . . Dunmore, also a poet, uses metaphor to paint painfully vivid images and manages to convey depths of emotion and meaning in remarkably short sentences. . . .” Dunmore crafts her prose into beautiful imagery. . . . Although the story’s setting is reminiscent of a Gothic classic, the novel has a current flair in Catherine’s self-awareness and observations, and in the psychological complexity of each character. . . . Distinctly modern.”” Associated PressWhen Rob breaks his leg, Cathy firmly confronts her grandfather: “I saw what he saw: my set, sullen face, my big hands. I was capable and I knew I was. I could inflict my will on him” (p. 164). Much is made of Cathy’s physical attributes in this passage. Does her stature affect her personality? Discuss the role her physicality plays later in life, when only she and her grandfather are left on the farm. What’s the significance of Grandfather shouting they should “CHERISH…one another”? (p. 265) Mr. Bullivant offers Cathy glimpses of a larger world, and Kate urges her to leave the estate, but she cannot bring herself to act in response. She even states that she’s “not sure about anything” except staying at the house (p. 253). Why is Cathy so attached to a house with bad memories? What does this suggest about her psychological complexity? This book was like a dream. Dunmore’s fluid style, her depictions of English countryside, and her oddly flawed characters all seem like things I have seen whilst sleeping. There’s a lazy quality here, something difficult to describe, but something which is nonetheless compelling and confusing all at once. This book is about a woman named Cathy who is trapped in the life she is living, out in the English countryside, because she is scared to go anywhere or do anything. It's ok for others to go off and see places but she can't because she always finds some kind of logical excuse. And that's why she's trapped in "winter", with her life not really moving forward at all even though the years are passing.. Well, are you going or not?’ she demanded impatiently. `It’s you that’s eating these muffins, not me.’