A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore

Dipping into the library’s e-resources provided me with a few gems during lockdown, including this Orange Prize winner from Helen Dunmore. A Spell of Winner is mostly set in the years before World War One, and describes the stifling world of siblings Cathy and Rob, brought up deep in the English countryside at the crumbling home of their grandfather. Their mother, too wild for country life, had long since run away to live with artists in the South of France, while their father is in a home for the insane.

Now in her teens, Cathy has the same wild hair as her mother and her grandfather worries she’ll go astray in the same way. Her old governess, the meddling and fussy Miss Gallagher can’t stay away and causes tension, doting on Cathy and making her loathing for Rob obvious. Both Miss G and the grandfather see in Mr Bullivant, the new neighbour, a possible suitor for Cathy.  Bullivant, who is keen to replicate a Mediterranean style villa on his estate, talks about art and his life abroad, and could be the sane and balanced person Cathy needs - but can she shake free of her heritage?

You live in the past,’ Kate said. ‘You live in your grandfather’s time.’ But she was wrong. The past was not something we could live in, because it had nothing to do with life. It was something we lugged about, as heavy as a sack of rotting apples.

Dunmore has a knack for building tension as one appalling event follows another and Cathy’s future seems blighted. The atmosphere of a desolate manor house in winter, surrounded by thick woods, and small acts of violence combine to add a feeling of doom and we have to remember that WWI is just around the corner. The old mouldering order is set to be swept away – can the characters resurrect any hope from the ashes?

A Spell of Winter is a haunting story that will draw you in. There are one or two grisly moments - the maid Kate’s story about her uncle’s body in the prologue almost put me off. But thankfully I persevered. The story is well-paced and wise, Dunmore’s writing is poetic and evocative and the characters are vivid and memorable. A deserving prize-winner and a modern classic.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: A Spell of Winter