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

A House of Ghosts by W C Ryan

William Ryan is an award-winning Irish writer, known for his Captain Korolev series set in 1930s Moscow. Writing as W C Ryan, his latest book, A House of Ghosts, mixes mystery with an element of the supernatural.

The novel is set in 1917, on a wild and rugged island off the Devon coast, where sits Blackwater Abbey, the baronial pile belonging to Lord Highmount, a munitions entrepreneur. The Abbey is so old it is well and truly haunted and having lost both of their sons in the war, the Highmounts bring together two mediums in the hope of communicating with the dead.

But that isn’t all that is going on at the Abbey. London’s Whitehall suspects someone has been leaking plans for a new torpedo designed at Highmount’s factory. Among the guests, Madame Feda and Count Orlov are suspicious because they are, well, foreign. Also tagging along is Rolleston Miller-White, who has gambling debts and is engaged to Lord Highmount’s daughter Evelyn, and then there’s Lady Highmount who is Austrian. The suspects being to assemble.

Crossing in heavy seas as storms set to lash the island is Kate Cartwright, a Whitehall dog’s-body also on the guest-list. She’s an old family friend of the Highmounts and conveniently also has the gift of seeing ghosts. Kate adds eyes and ears for Whitehall agent Captain Donovan, masquerading as a valet, and the two make an uneasy alliance as they wait for the spy to make their move.

A House of Ghosts is a witty, action-packed yarn, filled with a varied cast of house-party guests and servants, reminiscent of Agatha Christie, but updated for twenty-first century tastes. There’s lots of snappy dialogue between Kate and Donovan, who are a brilliant odd couple: Donovan the stony-faced man of action; Kate, both intelligent and genteel, but set apart from her class because of her ‘special’ talent.

We are reminded of the popularity of spiritualism at a time when so many families were losing their sons to the carnage of World War One. And the Abbey is packed with ghosts who frequently find the antics of the living amusing. If you’re after a spine-tingling thrill, A House of Ghosts might not be the book for you, but there’s plenty of fun nonetheless. I whizzed through the novel enjoying every page.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: A House of Ghosts

From auditor to soldier: stories of the men who served

Can we ever have too many books on the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and World War One?

This commemorative book produced by the Office of the Auditor-General looks and feels like an oversized coffee table book. However don’t let the glossy cover or the rather staid title put you off. This is a fascinating insight into 32 ordinary New Zealand men who voluntarily enlisted in the First World War.

The brief introduction explains the job titles and order of seniority system used by the Audit Department, as well as how the New Zealand armed forces turned these auditors into soldiers. Archival photographs show the various sports teams the men and women participated in as well as a photograph of the 1921 annual picnic.

New Zealand had the highest casualty rate amongst British Empire countries and this is reflected in these biographies. Starting with their work within the Audit Department before they enlisted, each biography includes military service details, battles involved in, injuries sustained and, for those that survived, their post-war employment.

Many of the men from the Audit Department served first in the Samoan Advance Party before going off to the battles at Passchendale, Le Quesnoy, Somme, Messines and ANZAC Cove. Of the 32 men, five did not return having been either killed in action or died from disease. The 27 men who survived did so with both physical and mental wounds having also suffered measles, tuberculosis and pneumonia.

There are three local men featured: Harry Latchford Marbrook, Hastings; George Grant Smith, Waipukurau; Henry Charles Steere, Waipawa. All returned to work for the Audit Department after the war.

Not all the men led such worthy lives post war. Several of the soldiers were imprisoned for theft and fraud with one soldier imprisoned multiple times before being diagnosed with acute mental depression. Each biography is accompanied by a small photograph of the soldier as well as photographs of toy soldiers re-enacting war scenes.

So can we ever have too many books on the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and World War One? I don’t think so. Not when we have books like From auditor to soldier, personalising soldiers’ stories and telling it like it was, warts and all.

Lest we forget

Posted by The Rummaging Bibliophile

Catalogue link: From Auditor to Soldier