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. I wanted the thermometer to drop lower and lower until not even a trace of mercury showed against the figures. My winter excitement quickened each year with the approach of darkness. He was born in June, and I was born in the middle of the night, on the 21 st of December. – creating a wonderful sense of aloneness and extreme cold. Dumore’s writing in these sections is exquisite In the early part of the book – there are glimpses ofĪn older Catherine – living alone in winter, in the same house, emptied ofĮveryone – haunted by the past. Having to protect his sister from their father’s rather strange behaviour. Sanatorium of some kind, just once, a rather distressing visit – which sees Rob It was something we lugged about, as heavy as a sack of rotting apples.”Ĭatherine grows up knowing her grandfather dislikes The past was not something we could live in, because it had nothing to do with life. ‘You live in your grandfather’s time.’ But she was wrong. Have the children’s mother so much as mentioned. Their grandfather the man from nowhere – is a remote, closed off figure – who won’t Young siblings Rob and Catherine don’t understand why they have beenĪbandoned by their parents while they are living in their grandfather’s house. Narrated by Catherine, the youngest of two The novel opens in the early twentieth century, some A spell of winter hangs over it, and everyone is gone.” “I look at the house, still and breathless in the frost. Served to remind me how I haven’t read nearly enough Helen Dunmore. It is an absolutely stunning piece of writing – and has It was, appropriately enough the book that won the first ever prize in 1996. I knew it would be a challenge but since then I have read precisely nothing new for it until I picked A Spell of Winter off my #20booksofsummer pile. Some of you may remember that a few months ago I somewhat rashly decided on a long lasting reading project, to read all the winners and shortlisted books of the women’s prize.
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