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

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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.

This was the first winner of the Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize for Fiction), and I found it very impressive. 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. Largely left to fend for themselves, Cathy's relationship with Rob becomes unhealthily close, with tragic consequences which are played out at length against the historical backdrop of the immediate pre-Great War setting. This haunting and evocative novel was the first Orange Prize Winner and set a high standard for future hopefuls. Rob just flounces off to Canada for no particular reason, and then he comes back and goes off to the war and we never find out what happened to him?I'm predisposed to love half a dozen tropes in A Spell of Winter, but to my surprise the book did nothing for me. Also, it won the Orange Prize in 1996, so someone with literary power obviously thought it was good, too. Although I do like good writing, it does cross that fine line into being overwrought – sometimes the melodrama is amped up and other times it goes into overload.

She excels at wonderful descriptions of the landscape, from brambly, choking hedges with a sense of decay and branchy woodlands, to fresh soil being ploughed.

He also worries about Cathy and encourages her to leave and see the world, but she would rather stay at home with her grandfather. Her brother is the only one who really understands what her life has been like, and keeps her close.

The crumbling house with its wintry Gothic mood is perhaps symptomatic of the era and contrasts interestingly with Mr Bullivant’s stories of his Mediterranean home and his plans to replicate it in England. Het is ook een boek over verlies, alle soorten verlies, van ouders, van een schijnbaar onvoorwaardelijke liefde, van een huis, van verwachtingen . A less experienced author may have turned this into a "romantic melodrama", but Delbanco stated that Dunmore's "authoritative telling" has produced a "haunt[ing]" tale. For whatever reason, I have some kind of secret (not to secret now) fascination for literary brother/sister incest stories.There are some very surprising twists in this novel and I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it. It is testament to the strength of Dunmore’s writing that she delivers truths about love and loss through the vehicle of such ingrained taboo.