Winter Solstice - Softcover

Pilcher, Rosamunde

Softcover

ISBN 10: 125007746X ISBN 13: 9781250077462

Publisher: Griffin, 2015

Synopsis

In Winter Solstice Rosamunde Pilcher brings her readers into the lives of five very different people....

Elfrida Phipps, once of London's stage, moved to the English village of Dibton in hopes of making a new life for herself. Gradually she settled into the comfortable familiarity of village life -- shopkeepers knowing her tastes, neighbors calling her by name -- still she finds herself lonely.

Oscar Blundell gave up his life as a musician in order to marry Gloria. They have a beautiful daughter, Francesca, and it is only because of their little girl that Oscar views his sacrificed career as worthwhile.

Carrie returns from Australia at the end of an ill-fated affair with a married man to find her mother and aunt sharing a home and squabbling endlessly. With Christmas approaching, Carrie agrees to look after her aunt's awkward and quiet teenage daughter, Lucy, so that her mother might enjoy a romantic fling in America.

Sam Howard is trying to pull his life back together after his wife has left him for another. He is without home and without roots, all he has is his job. Business takes him to northern Scotland, where he falls in love with the lush, craggy landscape and set his sights on a house.

It is the strange rippling effects of a tragedy that will bring these five characters together in a large, neglected estate house near the Scottish fishing town of Creagan.

It is in this house, on the shortest day of the year, that the lives of five people will come together and be forever changed. Rosamunde Pilcher's long-awaited return to the page will warm the hearts of readers both old and new. Winter Solstice is a novel of love, loyalty and rebirth.

About this title

Review:

One time actress Elfrida Phipps retires to a country cottage but is almost immediately reactivated through the personal tragedy of a comparatively new friend, Oscar Blundell, with whom she moves to an imposing old house, his shared inheritance, in Scotland. As Christmas approaches they are joined by a lovelorn cousin, Carrie, and her 14-year-old niece, Lucy, who is currently bothersome to the progress of her mother's new found love, and to her grandmother's hedonistic lifestyle. Sam Howard, troubleshooter in the textile industry, recently separated from his wife, arrives on the doorstep and finds himself unwittingly part of the soon-to-be snowbound family over Christmas. "Are you still snowed in with us, Sam? I hope so," says Edwina. "It would be such fun for all of us to be together." And so they all live happily ever after.

Lynn Redgrave, a good reader, voices the characters well but there's a recurrent smugness of expression that neutralises feelings of sympathy for this assortment who are destined by too many coincidences. A story without tension, the burdens of bereavement and finance and pleasures of romance and companionship are determined by unlikely turns of fate and the benefit of acquaintances who facilely solve the problems. --Running time 6 hours

--Lyn Took

Review:

"Tender... evocative... an occasion to celebrate." --People

"Readers may find so much enjoyment in Winter Solstice that they'll want to revisit some of Pilcher's other books, such as The Shell Seekers and Coming Home." --USA Today

"Charming... like Pilcher's other books, this one is as comfortable as a favorite tweed jacket." --Cincinnati Enquirer

"A leisurely, satisfying tale." --Orlando Sentinel

"A charming and thoughtful book rich in engaging characters that makes the ordinary seem extraordinary... warms the heart like a good cup of tea." --Booklist

"[An] evocative sense of place and watercolorist's eye for muted detail... the enduringly popular Pilcher holds fast to a theme that has all but disappeared from American fiction: the healing comforts of domesticity and companionship." --Kirkus

"Believable, multifaceted characters with rich inner lives... highly recommended." --Library Journal

"Heatwarming." --Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Griffin
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 125007746X
• ISBN 13: 9781250077462
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 527