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Title: A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore, Janet Maw ISBN: 0-7531-0716-3 Publisher: Isis Audio Pub. Date: January, 2000 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 10 List Price(USD): $99.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (12 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Think Bronte, not Joanna Trollope
Comment: Rarely, does one come across a gothic novel written by a modern novelist that is not totally insipid. Helen Dunmore's "A Spell of Winter" is literature and it is beautiful. The writing strikes a fine poetic balance - profoundly evocative without being overly dense or distracting from the story she unwinds. You are, quite simply, there. You smell, taste and feel everything. And, the scenery...ah, the scenes, the odd, strange and staggeringly beautiful scenes you find yourself experiencing (Dunmore is a master of place) - ones you won't forget after you close the book. It is all very confusing and exciting and exquistedly sad. The characters, particularly the female ones, are well-realized and deeply complex (just as people truly are in a life fully-lived). Dunmore has obviously, like many of us, been long haunted by Cathy and Heathcliff. Admittedly, I had a few problems with the novel's conclusion. Toward the end, I found many of the actions of the characters became totally, well, uncharacteristic and seemed manipulated to satisfy to the novel's plot, or lack thereof, toward the ending. I found this highly disappointing since I was so involved with the characters by that point. Much of the novel's trembling intensity seems to just peter out. Still, there did exist that "trembling intensity" and finding that anywhere in a novel is a gift not lightly dismissed.

Rating: 4
Summary: Haunting, enveloping, powerful prose
Comment: Siblings Rob and Catherine live in the big old house with their cold grandfather after their mother abandoned them and their father left to live in a mental institution. Left alone to wonder about the family secrets that seem to be hiding everywhere, they turn to each other for the love and affection they can't find elsewhere.

This is an absolutely haunting book. The writing was just about as beautiful and powerful as any I've encountered. Dunmore created such a strong sense of place that was so enveloping that I had to take breaks from reading just to warm up and bring myself back to my life, because I felt like if I spent too much time there in the world of the book, I'd be trapped and never make it out. I'm excited to read more by this author.

Rating: 2
Summary: Beautiful Prose, but Poor Characterization and No Plot
Comment: Well, it's difficult to know exactly what to say about this book. In some ways, I loved it and in other ways, I hated it. Or almost. I've read some of Dunmore's other books and liked them (with the exception of her latest, MOURNING RUBY) and I read A SPELL OF WINTER several years ago and I was very impressed with the prose, so I thought a recent rereading would only enrich my appreciation. I was very disappointed.

A SPELL OF WINTER is the tale of Catherine Allen and her brother Rob. Abandoned by their mother, and their father dead, they are raised by Kate, their (stereotypical) sturdy Irish servant and their grandfather in a crumbling English manor house. Isolated and left to themselves much of the time, Catherine and Rob come to share secrets and lies and they come to know each other in ways no brother and sister ever should. But survival is the key to their existence and they survive in any way they know how.

There really is no plot in A SPELL OF WINTER, something that I didn't find alarming...at first. I'm just as much a fan of character driven books as I am of plot driven ones. Perhaps more so. So, I was really looking forward to a wonderful character study (especially of Catherine, the narrator) in A SPELL OF WINTER. Unfortunately, that character study never materialized. What did materialize were a series of episodes. Interesting episodes, sometimes (not always), but nothing that really made compelling reading.

The characters in A SPELL OF WINTER were very poorly drawn, very "thin." I couldn't find sympathy for them or empathy with them. By the time I finished the book, I still didn't feel I'd come to know any of them. Most of them were little more than cyphers. The male characters, especially, were very thinly drawn. More "sketched in" than drawn. And no one's motivations were ever made clear. Dunmore seemed to grasp hold of a plot thread only to drop it for seemingly no reason whatsoever. It felt like she didn't know her characters herself and therefore, didn't know what to do with them.

Dunmore does write gorgeous, lyrical prose that is poetic in its intensity. I loved the prose in A SPELL OF WINTER more than in any book I can think of at the moment. It is quite old-fashioned, but I certainly didn't find it Gothic. It's just too bad the plot was non-existent and the characterization was so poor. And, as beautiful as the prose is, Dunmore does slip into melodrama quite a few times. Her writing, while gorgeous, isn't quite as claustrophobic as it should have been.

I didn't think the ending of A SPELL OF WINTER contained a "twist" at all. I found the ending very, very predictable and I could see it coming almost from the opening pages. I really didn't like it. It seemed so very "out of character" (but then much in this book was "out of character") and I have to wonder if Dunmore only wrote it so her book wouldn't be all darkness and gloom. And, speaking of that "darkness and gloom," even though this book contains murder, death, famine, war and other terrible things, I really never experienced them as "terrible." I suppose that's because I felt absolutely no emotional engagement with any of the characters and, truthfully, they didn't seem to experience their toils and troubles as "terrible."

I really can't recommend A SPELL OF WINTER to anyone at all. There's no plot and there's little characterization. The book's one redeeming quality is the lush vibrancy of its prose. It might be worth it to read it for that alone. Each reader will have to decide that for himself or herself. Or, it could be read as an example of how not to write a novel.

And what's with the title? In the book, it's summer more often than it's winter.

I'm really sorry I can't recommend this book. It was so "pretty" that I wish I could. It was pretty, but, in the end, it really has nothing of lasting value to offer the reader. I think it was a good idea, but sadly, an opportunity that completely missed the mark. I don't know why I didn't see this the first time I read it.

I give it two stars for lovely prose and that's it.