A Spell of Winter: WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION (Penguin Essentials, 114)

Dunmore, Helen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241986524 ISBN 13: 9780241986523

Publisher: Penguin, 2019

'I wanted us to wake to a kingdom of ice where our breath would turn to icicles as it left our lips, and we would walk through tunnels of snow to the outhouses and find birds fallen dead from the air . . .'

In the years just before World War One, Cathy and her brother Rob find themselves living alone in a decaying English mansion with their distant, stern grandfather. Abandoned by their mother while their distraught father is confined to an asylum, they roam the grounds freely with little understanding of trespass. Lost in their own private world, they seek and find new lines to cross. But they are not so separate from the outside, nor as alone, as they believe . . .

The inaugural winner of the Orange Prize

'Written so seductively that passages sing out from the page' Sunday Times

Review:

A marvellous novel about forbidden passions (Daily Mail)

An intensely gripping book...written so seductively that some passages sing out from the page, like music for the eyes (Sunday Times)

A hugely involving story which often stops you in your tracks with the beauty of its writing (Observer)

An electrifying and original talent, a writer whose style is characterized by a lyrical, dreamy intensity (Guardian)

About the Author:

Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children's author and poet. She published twelve novels including Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the inaugural Orange Prize in 1996; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby and House of Orphans. She was posthumously awarded the Costa 2017 prize for her poetry collection Inside the Wave.