Customer Reviews

Winter Ghosts

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I absolutely loved Kate Moss's previous books and was eager to read this one. When I started to read the book, it was all too familiar to me. I realized that I already read this book! She had written a young adult book, titled 'The Cave' that I read a while back. This is the same book-- no significant alterations, if any! I was very disappointed to waste money on a book I already read-- with just a new name and face. I feel very cheated... and this is the first and only review I have written on Amazon!

The Cave (Quick Reads)

First Line: He walked like a man recently returned to the world.

It is 1928, and Freddie is still mourning the death of his older brother in World War I. Traveling as a way to both learn and escape, he finds himself high in the French Pyrenees. He loses control of his car in a snowstorm and is forced to walk through the woods until he finds a small village where he can take refuge until his car is repaired.

Invited to a village celebration, Freddie meets the beautiful and ethereal Fabrissa who is also mourning the loss of loved ones. During the course of the night, Freddie and Fabrissa share their stories, and when dawn breaks, Freddie not only uncovers an ancient mystery, he also discovers his own role in the life of this remote village.

Having previously read Mosse's other two novels, Labyrinth and Sepulchre, I expected an engrossing tale densely layered with the atmosphere and history of the French Pyrenees. I was not disappointed. Almost from the moment Freddie stepped foot in the quiet, tiny village, the hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle. He was a young man so in need of being rescued-- and of being the rescuer-- that I couldn't help but keep my fingers crossed as he navigated the streets of an ancient place where nothing was really as it seemed to be.

The only quibble I have with this book is that, at one third the size of her previous two novels, I felt a bit cheated. The marvelous atmosphere had time to build only so far before the tale was finished, and my unease allowed to melt away like wisps of fog. If the book hadn't felt so rushed, I would now be waving it around in the air exclaiming, "You've gotta read this!"

Kate Mosse has taken the history of the Cathars, a persecuted religious sect in 14th century France, and made it her own. In her third novel, The Winter Ghosts, she departs from the archaeo-thriller genre to try her hand at a ghost story. Freddie Watson has lost ten years of his life to his grief over the death of his beloved brother in the Great War. Having recovered from a severe breakdown, he's mentally and physically fragile, and his physician recommends an extended holiday. Freddie decides to drive through the Languedoc, and, caught in a snowstorm in the Pyrennees, he crashes his car and must take refuge in a remote village. He's struck by the loneliness of Nulle, but is grateful to be given shelter by a kindly woman who runs a small inn. She invites him to the village fete, to which everyone wears medieval clothing. Feeling rather silly, he accepts, and is pleased to make the acquaintance of a lovely young woman in a long blue robe. Both Freddie and Fabrissa have suffered shattering losses, and they are drawn to each other, sharing their experiences throughout the long evening.

Ms. Mosse populates this evocative tale with cobbled lanes, hidden caves, mysterious ruins, and mountainous pathways. Because Freddie is psychologically exhausted, he's also more susceptible to the vibrations of violence, death, mourning, and compassion. Little by little, he comes to understand the shadows which darken Nulle, and to find release from his own shadowy struggle. Did he encounter some sort of "time-slip", or is his awakening attributable to his own psychological healing?

While this is no horror story, The Winter Ghosts, with its restrained yet evocative prose and atmospheric setting, may continue to haunt you long after the last page has been turned.

I didn't expect this book to actually be a ghost story, but was intrigued by the 1928 setting in the French Pyrenees. Well hooray, hooray. It truly is a yarn about ghosts reaching out from the past and requesting the help they need to rest. Although I am always reluctant to reveal too much of any plot in a review, this tidbit will not come as a surprise to anyone.
Freddie is traveling after a stay in an institution. He is unable to come to terms with the death of his brother, who was lost in WWI. He has been only half alive since that event, and this book, and its ghosts, stress the importance of living fully, of looking about and reveling in life. In being aware of your place and purpose during your own time.
The book has short chapters and is a very quick read. It is easy to keep saying, "Oh, one more chapter," and then, "Oh, just one chapter more." Then, before you know it, you have closed the back cover and finished the story. The ghosts' stories are based on true and very horrific historical events. If you are a reader who enjoys old novels discovered in the corner of resale shops and buried deep in erratic piles of goods at flea markets, then you will appreciate this selection. It has a timeless sense to it, so while it doesn't read exactly like a modern novel, it can still be happily devoured by todays' bibliophiles.

This is the only book I've ever read about WWI survivors that did not focus on a returned veteran. Here the protagonist is the unloved younger brother who cannot shake off the loss of his older sibling. We get the story as he tells it to a sympathetic bookseller in France, so we must tease out the reason behind his trauma from the narrative. His narrative of a snowbound auto journey into Southern France is an atmosphere adventure tale, and we are not too surprised that he fetches up at a rather forsaken French backwater near Christmas. At first his adventures at a local holiday festival seem like a local history reenactment. Slowly you begin to realize he has opened a door in time and met a girl whose sorrows outweigh his own. He partakes of the medieval persecution of the French Cathars and finally finds himself in the outcome.

I am mildly dyslexic, so 49 out of 50 books I try to read I end up tossing within the first chapter (or first few pages) because the story just isn't worth my struggle to obtain comprehension. That said, after the first chapter of The Winter Ghosts, I could not put it down.

Kate Mosse has the perfect balance of describing a scene while still moving it along, and moving the plot through the twists and turns while allowing the reader to savor the bittersweet, often intense, sequences.

After The Winter Ghosts, I am eagerly exploring Mosse's other written work.

FIRST SENTENCE: He walked like a man recently returned to the world.

We open in 1933, with Frederick Watson, a well-dressed and deliberate gentleman, walking into the shop of Monsieur Sourat, a bookseller and medieval scholar, in Toulouse. Freddie needs a translation of an ancient letter written in Occitan, an old language of the region. And the story behind the letter unfolds ...

Freddie has previously spent time in a sanatorium, after a breakdown when he was 21 over the death of his brother, George, who died in the war six years before. Ten years after George's death, still steeped in grief and melancholy, his health has never been fully restored, and he takes a small road trip. He ends in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where he has a car accident. He seems to have heard a voice both before and after the accident:

"I am the last"
"The others have slipped away into darkness"

As he walks, he finds himself in Nulle, a village that seems to have some sadness hanging over it. At the inn where he takes a room, Madame Galy tells him of a festival that evening and gives him a map to find it so he can attend if he feels up to it. When he eventually makes it to the festival, after getting turned around quite a bit, he meets a beautiful girl named Fabrissa, who captures his heart and appears to read his thoughts.

This novel has a classic writing style, written in brooding and somewhat gothic tones. As you read, you just know something is going to happen and the creeping suspense keeps you turning page after page.

What we find is a surprising ages-old tale of sadness, and a book that you'll want to put on your keeper shelf.

QUOTES

Delusion and hope and longing, all tumbling one after the other like a falling line of dominoes. It was, after all a path well worn. A decade of mourning leaves its footprints on the heart.

"...They wanted the son who played ruby and cricket and went to war, not a sickly indoors boy, a boy who cared more for music and books than riding or hunting or skating on the river in winter when the River Lavant froze over."

"....Life is not, as we are taught, a matter of seeking answers, but rather learning which are the questions we should ask."

Writing: 5 out of 5 stars
Plot: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Characters: 4 out of 5 stars
Reading Immersion: 4.5 out 5 stars

BOOK RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars

"The Winter Ghosts," a story of death, grief, and letting go, begins with a young man, Freddie, who is in deep, extended mourning for his dead brother George (who died in WWI under brutal, but not unusual circumstances). Having been institutionalized for his inability to cope, Freddie now travels the French countryside on an extended tour recommended by his doctors to clear his head and give him new purpose. When he car breaks down in the Pyrenees, he must stay in Nulle, a dying town nearby. There, at a strange local festival, he meets Fabrissa, who tells him a tale of persecution and exile. Shaken out of his misery by Fabrissa's delicate beauty and unique mannerisms, Freddie regains an interest in the living, only to be drawn into a sad tale of the dead.

That's basically what the book jacket would have you believe this story is primarily about. Unfortunately, the novella is only 260 pages. Freddie doesn't even meet Fabrissa until page 103. The preceding 102 pages are atmospheric lead-in material. Mosse weaves a dramatic cloak of mournful melancholy under which all the survivors of WWI live. She effectively creates the feeling of palpable loss - a whole generation destroyed by the inexorable forward momentum of the war machine. But if you're expecting a creepy ghost story and you get depressing WWI memoirs, you (like me) might be turned off. I appreciate Mosse's talent for description, but when there is little narrative development to drive the descriptive passages, I get bored. It took me two weeks to finish this short book, and I generally read voraciously. I just wasn't motivated to continue.

As for the ghost story, when the book finally comes to its point, it isn't particularly frightening. A bit shiver-inducing, with the plot of military occupation, heartless religious persecution, and needless killing, but not really "ghost-y" per se. The reader easily spots the 'chilling truth' about Fabrissa, and aside from a mildly macabre scene in a winter cavern, there is nothing to recommend this book as an effectively spooky tale. The melancholy tone persists to the end, and the conclusion is too anticlimactic even for a book as slight as this. For a much more sinister example of the novella-horror genre, I would recommend Susan Hill's "Woman in Black" or "Man in the Picture."

The book was good - not what I expected. Somehow the end wasn't satisfying. It left me feeling that something was incomplete - rushed .

Freddie has always lived in his brother's shadow, which is ok with him as he idolizes his brother. But when George goes missing, presumed dead, Freddie hangs on only as long as he can. Now, a few years have passed and Freddie is on a much needed trip to the mountains of France. An accident in the night leads him to a strange discovery. But is any of it real?

A quick and intriguing little winter ghost story, perfect for a night by the fireplace. I loved the setting for this book, both in time and place. The historical piece this is based on is fascinating and one that I knew very little about. While Mosse touches on it only enough to include it in the tale, it has prompted me to learn more. THE WINTER GHOSTS is a very Victorian style ghost story.