And then Cathy finally meets up with her mother again, but we never find out why the mother left in the first place? I appreciate ambiguity that can go one way or another, but too many possibilities leaves a story feeling unfinished, imo. 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. 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.

Dunmore's writing is the star of the show here: gorgeously lyrical, evocative and atmospheric, alive with startling imagery and unexpected conjunctions. 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. A Spell of Winter is a difficult book to categorize and difficult to explain without giving too much away - but it follows siblings Cathy and Rob who have spent their lives in a quasi-abandoned manor in the English countryside which belonged to their parents; their father is now dead and their mother ran off when they were young. There are some very surprising twists in this novel and I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it.I was especially taken with the last third or so of the book, as we move towards and into the First World War, and Catherine must decide her future in a very different present. A Spell of Winter я все поражалась, как такое бывает – такая роскошь, такая избыточность, когда литература может себе позволить что-то промежуточное, просто прекрасно средний роман, в котором все гладко, продуманно, прошито и выписано. Unsettling love and stifled horror create and then destroy the claustrophobic world of this lush, literary Gothic set in turn-of-the-century England . Dunmore's prose is incredibly rich and detailed which can be beautiful to read but also quite tedious at times when you just want to know what is happening in the plot. Cathy’s grandfather comes from no one and nothing, and is focused on building a home and legacy for the future generations of his family.

Dunmore’s writing is both flowing and haunting, easy to read but also determined to crawl under the reader’s skin. Reading this book made me feel the way I felt when I watched The Piano or Angels and Insects, or read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. It’s about a young woman, her brother, and a strange life with absent parents and the odd characters who are there in their place. There is the same harsh northern landscape, the same tug of forbidden passions, family secrets similarly buried, and the familiar situation of the rich bachelor a distant figure on the neighboring estate. He will leave her body before I do, and he’ll be there, waiting for me, making sure I’m never alone.

And that means there are no emotional stakes for me, just a constructness where the workings are too visible.

I wanted us to wake to a kingdom of ice where our breath would turn to icicles as it left our lips, and we would walk through tunnels of snow to the outhouses and find birds fallen dead from the air. Also important to note: the plot will not answer all of the questions you will inevitably ask yourself as the story unfolds. It’s a sorrowful picture, and although I often struggled to empathise, I was still dragged under the melancholy veil as we both suffocated through this life.During this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and she went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller with The Siege, which was described by Antony Beevor as a ‘world-class novel’ and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize. It really captured the period in which it is set (leading up to WW1) with some dark and gothic elements to it as well. At the beginning I did find it a bit confusing as there were some sudden time jumps but later the story settled down and there was no more confusion. But as they enter adulthood the close bond they share must be left behind though Catherine ardently wants things to remain the same.