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

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With both parents gone, Catherine and Rob go and live with their grandfather in a mansion and befriend the helpers there. By presenting them and their often deplorable actions without judgement, she asks us to question human boundaries, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions in many instances. I also wish we’d gotten more answers from the end of the book – I don’t mind open endings, but I thought there were too many things we never found out. My third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and since then I have published a number of novels, short story collections and books for children.

It’s a sorrowful picture, and although I often struggled to empathise, I was still dragged under the melancholy veil as we both suffocated through this life.With her sumptuous use of words, she evokes a rich, gothic setting, and a quietly sinister and claustrophobic atmosphere that I adored. Set largely in the build up to WWI, the story is narrated by Catherine, a young woman who feels increasingly cut off from the outside world. I don't think this is the kind of book that people intensely hate - I think it's more of a 'it was fine, nothing special' for a lot of readers. It's not a perfect book, but I loved it--stories with this kind of emotional heft, without melodrama, are hard to find.

All that said, this is a uniquely compelling read that ticked so many of my boxes, I won’t be at all surprised if it stays with me for quite some time. All told, I would say this is an excellent choice of literature if you’re looking for something dark and bleak that examines a childhood without parental guidance and affection, forbidden love, familial obligations, and a life of seclusion. They are brought up by servants in the house of their grandfather, an Irishman who made his fortune somehow and is known in the neighbourhood as ‘the man from nowhere’. Mostly having a buddy just helps motivate me to actually pick up a book that I’ve been wanting to read but for whatever reason just haven’t made time for on my own.Catherine and her brother Rob grow up on a large but failing English country estate owned by their grandfather.

This is a novel of forbidden love, family secrets and how Cathy gradually becomes a woman and learns to understand what drove her mother away.They visit him one day as small children under the care of Miss Gallagher, the meddling governess who adores young Cathy but loathes Rob.