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

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a b Cain, Sian (2 January 2018). "Helen Dunmore wins posthumous Costa award for collection Inside the Wave". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 January 2018 . Retrieved 2 January 2018. Mostly the children run wild in the woods and there is a sense of nature, both bounteous and grisly in Dunmore’s atmospheric setting where images of violence against small animals recur. Miss Gallagher fears for Cathy, as does her grandfather, and at seventeen, Cathy is introduced to Mr Bullivant, the wealthy new owner of the neighbouring estate who is fresh from Italy. He collects art, is pleasant company and knows Cathy’s mother. He also worries about Cathy and encourages her to leave and see the world, but she would rather stay at home with her grandfather. 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 talks about their mother, who has abandoned them to live in the south of France – she was a bit wild, with crazy Irish hair that poor young Cathy seems to have inherited. Their dad is in a home for the insane. They visit him one day as small children under the care of Miss Gallagher, the meddling governess who adores young Cathy but loathes Rob. The visit does not go well.

At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.Catherine and her brother Rob grow up on a large but failing English country estate owned by their grandfather. They have been abandoned by their parents and raised by a servant not much older than them, Kate. The siblings’ relationship is both disturbing and tender, both outrageous and relatable. WWI is brewing, but the household dramas take center stage. The book takes place during pre first World War Britain and focuses on two children; Cathleen and her brother Rob. When both children were young, their mother ran away, Something their father was not able to accept and it eventually leads to madness.

Shortlist announced". Walter Scott Prize. 24 March 2015. Archived from the original on 26 March 2015 . Retrieved 24 March 2015. Comparing herself to the beautiful Livvy, a dowdier Cathy thinks: "I was too like my mother. My face made people think of the things men and women did together in the dark" (p. 66). What does she mean? What kind of face forces people into shame? Contrast this with the shame that Miss Gallagher attempts to stir up in people. When closely observing the paintings of Richard Tandy, Cathy notices that "the sky was so pale, it dazzled, and behind the wood there was a heap of hills, purple as damsons" (p. 86). Intrigued by the style, she suggests it represents a different "reality" and a different "language." Why did Mr. Bullivant want Cathy to see these works? In what kind of reality does Cathy exist? 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. Abandoned by her mother as a child, embarrassed by the mental breakdown of her father that led to his hospitalisation, and ignored by the grandfather who finds too much pain in her resemblance to his absent daughter, she clings to her brother, Rob, for comfort. Hunkering down for the winter in their secluded, crumbling mansion, their mutual misplaced need for love takes their relationship down a dark and dangerous path that will pit them against the few who remain close to them. Out of curiosity, after I'd finished the book I read WITH YOUR CROOKED HEART, Dunmore's latest. Although some of the same themes surface --- particularly the absent mother --- and there is a continuing taste for the macabre, Dunmore doesn't overdo her effects or use more words than she has to. Her people, instead of having to fight their way out of encumbering gothic stereotypes, are fully themselves --- sympathetic despite addiction, brutality, dishonesty, pain --- from the start. And the suspense is terrific.In a review in The Washington Post, American writer and academic Nicholas Delbanco described A Spell of Winter as "an erotic pastoral". [3] He said it is "heady Gothic stuff" reminiscent of Brontë's Wuthering Heights. A less experienced author may have turned this into a "romantic melodrama", but Delbanco stated that Dunmore's "authoritative telling" has produced a "haunt[ing]" tale. [3] A Spell of Winter is considered a literary Gothic novel. When it began in the late-eighteenth century, Gothicism emphasized experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, etc. What motifs does the author use to create this atmosphere? Which eerie features are grounded in reality? Which ones are mysterious?

Blood seeped rustily out of me…. I thought I would never stop bleeding” (189). These are the words of Cathy after her abortion. Blood is mentioned numerous times in the text. Give more examples. Why did the author choose blood as a definitive symbol? Cain, Sian (5 June 2017). "Poet and author Helen Dunmore dies aged 64". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 June 2017 . Retrieved 5 June 2017. Woodman, Sue (1 July 1996). "Orange is a female color". The Nation. Washington D.C . Retrieved 12 December 2011. (subscription required) Scenes of madness are prominent plot devices in this novel. From the helpless father to the domineering governess, or even the exuberant Mr. Bullivant, the reader encounters off-kilter behavior. Give examples of when Cathy's sanity could be called into question. Which characters are the most stable? Which character is accused of madness without the reader experiencing it firsthand? They were bringing him down the curve of the stairs,’ said Kate. She laid the muffin down on the hearth and showed us with her hands how the men eased the body round the narrow top of the stairs. `There we were, all of us looking from the kitchen.’Although I was expecting more plot, and more revelation, this is more a study of sadness or an exploration of family. The entire extent of their secrets never was revealed to me, and my nose for scandal was never fully rewarded. The scandal I did see, however, was enough to ensure my nose returned pointing firmly at my feet, and I’m sure my eyes and ears tried to close themselves at certain points also. A Spell of Winter follows the lives of Cathy and Rob before, during and after World War I. Their mother abandons the family home when they are children and their father dies, leaving them to grow up in a decaying mansion cut off from the rest of the world. Their sense of isolation and dependency on each other mutates into incest. It is testament to the strength of Dunmore’s writing that she delivers truths about love and loss through the vehicle of such ingrained taboo. I didn’t merely believe in their relationship, I wholeheartedly rooted for it. For me, that is the power of writing, right there. Everyone, including Cathy, compares herself to her mother. By the story's end, do you think this comparison is warranted? Why or why not? I’d say you have to be in the right mood for this book, to be willing to wade through the narrative dream in a state of confusion to get to its revelations. I ended up finding it very impactful: sad and true and beautiful. This novel is set in England in the era of World War I. The war starts later in the novel, which was the first clue to the time in which the story is set. Cathy and her brother Rob live on a rural estate with their grandfather. Their mother abandoned her family and left for warmer parts of Europe. Their father's health declined after this and he was eventually committed to a sanatorium where he died. The siblings are left to their own devices with only an unlikeable governess, and a single servant to see to their needs.