A Spell of Winter: A Novel [Hardcover]

Helen Dunmore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2001

Helen Dunmore's most celebrated work -- never before published in the United States -- is a compelling turn-of-the-century tale of innocence corrupted by secrecy and the grace of second chances. Bearing the distinctive lyrical beauty of her predecessors, A Spell of Winter asserts Dunmore's claim to the territories staked out by some of the great nineteenth-century novelists. But with a strong, sensuous magic and a modern understanding of love that is all her own, Dunmore defies all the old formulas. Catherine and her brother, Rob, do not know why they have been abandoned by their parents. In the house of their grandfather, "the man from nowhere," they forge a passionate refuge for themselves against the terror of family secrets, and while the world outside moves to the brink of war, their sibling love becomes fraught with dangers. But as Catherine fights free of the past, the spell of winter that has held her in its grasp begins to break. The novel's rich imagery moves between the stark, harsh winter world that Catherine loves and the warm summers she loathes, when the air is thick with the scent of roses and painful memories. Through decades of changing seasons, the two siblings mature within an enclosed world in which they are virtually imprisoned by servants who guard the mysteries of their heritage. In different ways, first Rob and later Catherine will dare to break through the wall that encircles their perversely stifled lives to move toward heartbreaking but final release. Dunmore's hypnotic, affecting prose is filled with unexpected tenderness and moments of beauty as she expertly evokes a melancholy era with a wholly original edge and keenness. A Spell of Winter recasts the Gothic pastoral novel with breathtaking contemporary insight and explores with astonishing perception the moral complexities of human choice and action.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Unsettling love and stifled horror create and then destroy the claustrophobic world of this lush, literary gothic set in turn-of-the-century England. Catherine and Rob Allen, siblings two years apart, grow up in a world of shameful secrets. Their mother creates a public outcry, abandoning her family for a bohemian life on the Continent. Their father, whose mental state always has been slightly precarious, is committed to an asylum in the country. The children are sealed off with their grandfather in a crumbling country estate accompanied by their sturdy and well-loved servant, Kate, and the predatory tutor, Miss Gallagher. In true gothic fashion, terror, violence and eroticism collect beneath every dark surface. Against this strange and secretive backdrop, Cathy and Rob develop a closeness so fierce that it eventually threatens to smother them both. Kate makes the first crack in their hermetically sealed world, which World War I eventually bursts wide open. With Kate's departure for Canada and Rob's for the front, destitute times at home force Cathy into self-reliance. It's only after she's redeemed by hardship that she's given a second chance to be redeemed by love. Though the setting is classic gothic, the novel is peculiarly modern with its precise, unforgiving depictions of childhood and madness, its dark sensuality and surprising, artful use of metaphor. The intensity and darkness of the world Dunmore creates teeters between gripping and overwrought; some may find the story heavy-handed. Still, Dunmore's keen, close writing is deserving of Britain's prestigious Orange Prize, which the novel won when it was first published in the U.K. in 1995, and most will enjoy the book as a finely crafted, if disturbing, literary page-turner. (Feb.)Forecast: Dunmore's stock has been steadily rising with the publication in the U.S. of her last three novels (Your Blue-Eyed Boy; Talking to the Dead; With Your Crooked Heart); demand for this earlier, career-establishing work should be strong.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In the years before World War I, Cathy, the narrator, and her brother grow up on their grandfather's impoverished English estate. Their mother abandoned them when they were small, and their father dies after being institutionalized. Except for the ministrations of the maid, Kate, and the interference of the repulsive governess, they are left on their own. It seems inevitable when their closeness takes an unnatural and destructive turn. A wealthy neighbor is refurbishing a nearby estate and offers Cathy glimpses of a larger world, but she cannot bring herself to respond. In the meantime, there are threats to her hermetic existence--the governess' intrusions become intolerable; first Kate and her brother, Rob, decide to leave. And finally the war comes, taking most of the neighboring men with it, so that Cathy is left with her ailing grandfather to scratch out an existence on the farm. It's only when the war ends and she is alone that she is ready to break away. With a handful of characters and rich, ripe prose, Dunmore creates a compelling tale of obsession. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr (March 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871137828
• ISBN-13: 978-0871137821
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,836,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, enveloping, powerful prose, February 2, 2004

By 

"cathst" (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Spell of Winter: A Novel (Paperback)

Siblings Rob and Catherine live in the big old house with their cold grandfather after their mother abandoned them and their father left to live in a mental institution. Left alone to wonder about the family secrets that seem to be hiding everywhere, they turn to each other for the love and affection they can't find elsewhere.

This is an absolutely haunting book. The writing was just about as beautiful and powerful as any I've encountered. Dunmore created such a strong sense of place that was so enveloping that I had to take breaks from reading just to warm up and bring myself back to my life, because I felt like if I spent too much time there in the world of the book, I'd be trapped and never make it out. I'm excited to read more by this author.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Think Bronte, not Joanna Trollope, March 10, 2002

By 

Alison Bunch (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Spell of Winter: A Novel (Hardcover)

Rarely, does one come across a gothic novel written by a modern novelist that is not totally insipid. Helen Dunmore's "A Spell of Winter" is literature and it is beautiful. The writing strikes a fine poetic balance - profoundly evocative without being overly dense or distracting from the story she unwinds. You are, quite simply, there. You smell, taste and feel everything. And, the scenery...ah, the scenes, the odd, strange and staggeringly beautiful scenes you find yourself experiencing (Dunmore is a master of place) - ones you won't forget after you close the book. It is all very confusing and exciting and exquistedly sad. The characters, particularly the female ones, are well-realized and deeply complex (just as people truly are in a life fully-lived). Dunmore has obviously, like many of us, been long haunted by Cathy and Heathcliff. Admittedly, I had a few problems with the novel's conclusion. Toward the end, I found many of the actions of the characters became totally, well, uncharacteristic and seemed manipulated to satisfy to the novel's plot, or lack thereof, toward the ending. I found this highly disappointing since I was so involved with the characters by that point. Much of the novel's trembling intensity seems to just peter out. Still, there did exist that "trembling intensity" and finding that anywhere in a novel is a gift not lightly dismissed.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Promising start but loses steam midway, May 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Spell of Winter (Paperback)

The blurb at the back of Helen Dunmore's Orange Prize winning novel, "A Spell of Winter" suggested a haunting gothic-styled thriller built around forbidden passions and family secrets. For a good two-thirds of the novel, Dunmore kept up the suspense with a litter of teases and dark hints which unfortunately remained unresolved and a mystery even at the end. You could have forgiven her deliberate sense of obscurity and vagueness had she gone for a less open ended denouement, but the last third of the novel was a major let down for me. I felt almost cheated after a such a promising start. Sure, Dunmore writes exquisitely. Her prose is smooth and fluent and a joy to read. Pity she let the suspense and momentum peter out midway. In my humble opinion, not up to the standards I was expecting from a prize winner. But Dunmore is an excellent writer. Perhaps the next book I read of hers will be more fulfulling.