A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore (Jayme)

Title:  A Spell of Winter

Author:  Helen Dunmore
Published:  1995, Penguin
Genre:  Gothic
Accolades:  1996 Orange Prize Winner

Isolated on their grandfather's estate after their mother abandoned them and their father is sent to a sanatorium Catherie and Rob rely on each other to navigate the secrets and loneliness of their world until their need for each other crosses boundaries and destroys all they know.

With Dunmore's haunting proses she draws the reader in this dark eerie story  as we are introduced to Catherine, a grown woman, living in one room of a decrepit estate trying to stay warm wrapped in her brother's army coat.  I was hooked immediately and could not let go.  Dunmore masterfully weaves suspense and horror as her tale twists and builds until you wonder how this story will resolve and then two thirds into it you realize that it doesn't - there lies the problem with this book.

Let me explain. I really did like this book.  The sensory details of an English winter had me reading this book wrapped in a blanket and drinking hot chocolate -  that's how atmospheric the book is - I was cold. Dunmore expertly drew me in and with each heightening twist I kept wondering how is she going to end this and I think she may have been asking herself the same question.  After the final crushing event I felt like I was reading a completely different book.  I kept thinking "Huh, what happened, this isn't how I would end it."  This book was to good for pat endings.

Is it worth reading? Absolutely, the writing is exquisite, but maybe you should stop reading in the middle of chapter 23rd that would have been a perfect, creepy ending.

Laura's Review - A Spell of Winter

A Spell of Winter
Helen Dunmore
313 pages

Catherine and her brother Rob come of age in their grandfather's house at the turn of the 20th century. Their mother left them when they were young, their father died, and they were raised largely by household servants. Their grandfather is an eccentric recluse, and any discussion of their parents is taboo. Catherine and Rob turn to each other for protection and to sort out their cruel and confusing world.

And that's when things get creepy. Although it's not a suspense or horror novel, A Spell of Winter unfolded in a similar way, where the reader anticipates an awful event and can only watch it happen. Several times I said to myself, "no, they wouldn't ..." But the siblings' emotional instability leads them to say and do some pretty bizarre things. And then suddenly World War I broke out and the novel took another turn. The pace accelerated, and the latter part of the novel was rather disjointed, as if Dunmore was using the war to tie up a lot of loose ends.

The book jacket on my copy of A Spell of Winter led me to believe this was a novel about emotional healing: "... as Catherine fights free of her past, the spell of winter that has held her in its grasp begins to break." The creepier parts of the book were more convincing than the supposed healing, which happened far too quickly given Catherine's lifetime of hurt and repression. A Spell of Winter was the first novel to be awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction, but it doesn't live up to some of the later winners. ( )

My original review can be found here.