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

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You also come to understand very early that stories hold quite different meanings for different listeners, and can be recast from many viewpoints. A Spell of Winteris a historical novel about two siblings, Cathy and Rob, whose parents have left them in the care of their grandfather and the servants that run his crumbling country house.

No one means Cathy ill, and their own motives are generally good and reasonable, but the girl is deeply hurt by all of them. It’s all very ephemeral, held together with a precarious structure, like a cobweb you see only when the mist settles on it. The plot describes the life of Catherine, who lives with her grandfather, her brother Rob and an Irish servant Kate in her grandfather's country house, which they struggle to maintain, after her mother has left her father and the family and the father has died. With its blend of beautiful writing, gripping narrative, and cleverly handled deeper themes, it’s easy to understand why this was the inaugural winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Also important to note: the plot will not answer all of the questions you will inevitably ask yourself as the story unfolds.And then Cathy finally meets up with her mother again, but we never find out why the mother left in the first place? The right elements are there: a complex and distinct protagonist, a gothic (dark, often intense) view of relationships and experiences with a poetic (if unrefined) voice to match, and a well-intended character arc. Though the house has a dominating presence, many of the book’s key moments – instances of sex, violence, conflict, and death – all take place in the surrounding wildlands. 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.

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. 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.Though so many of the details are eerie and unusual, its a fairly straightforward story of one girl’s quest for adulthood. I thought you did a great job in this review analyzing the failings of the final section, and I completely agree with your criticisms.

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