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

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It wasn’t, for me, a satisfactory conclusion, though I felt the book a worthwhile read regardless, and enjoyed engaging with its themes. There were parts earlier in the book when I felt that it was really too long, and the incest and abortion in the middle was squicky, and also quite an odd reading experience given that I'd inadvertently bagged two reads in a month featuring sibling incest - what? Rich and intricate, yet narrated with a deceptive simplicity that made all of her work accessible and heartfelt, her writing stood out for the fluidity and lyricism of her prose, and her extraordinary ability to capture the presence of the past. Even the protagonist, Catherine, whose perspective we follow from start to finish, feels detached from her own narrative.

The war fit the other content, but somehow it didn’t quite fit the shape and pace of the rest of the story. With both parents gone, Catherine and Rob go and live with their grandfather in a mansion and befriend the helpers there.

This is a very difficult book to describe, and a difficult story to explain my reaction to, so I’m not sure I’ve done it any justice. She died in June 2017, and in January 2018, she was posthumously awarded the Costa Prize for her volume of poetry, Inside the Wave. With its blend of beautiful writing, gripping narrative, and cleverly handled deeper themes, it’s easy to understand why this was the inaugural winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

I willed the snow to lie for ever, and I turned over and buried my head under the pillow so as not to hear the chuckle and drip of thaw…. Cathy and her older brother Rob grow up without their parents on an estate in rural England in the early 20th century. Although I do like good writing, it does cross that fine line into being overwrought – sometimes the melodrama is amped up and other times it goes into overload. 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. But the book only floats along--surprisingly explicit in some aspects, it still leaves too many secrets to linger in implication; its tone is always cold, dreamy, disconnected, and its impact follows suit.She excels at wonderful descriptions of the landscape, from brambly, choking hedges with a sense of decay and branchy woodlands, to fresh soil being ploughed.