Reading the 20th Century discussion

Welcome to our buddy read of A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore for November 2023.

Unsettling love and stifled horror create and then destroy the claustrophobic world of this lush, literary gothic set in turn-of-the-century England. Catherine and Rob Allen, siblings two years apart, grow up in a world of shameful secrets. Their mother creates a public outcry, abandoning her family for a bohemian life on the Continent. Their father, whose mental state always has been slightly precarious, is committed to an asylum in the country. The children are sealed off with their grandfather in a crumbling country estate accompanied by their sturdy and well-loved servant, Kate, and the predatory tutor, Miss Gallagher. In true gothic fashion, terror, violence and eroticism collect beneath every dark surface. Against this strange and secretive backdrop, Cathy and Rob develop a closeness so fierce that it eventually threatens to smother them both. Kate makes the first crack in their hermetically sealed world, which World War I eventually bursts wide open.

Winner of the 1996 Orange Prize for Fiction.

There are so many books this month - both on here and Detectives - that I am really behind. I have started this now though. It was the first winner of the Orange Prize for anyone interested in such things.

I'm planning to read this but in a book or two.

Yes, I know how you feel, RC. I am also very behind and trying to read some politics books alongside my daughter as well, who is doing the subject for A Level and wants to discuss them :)

You two are amazing 👏🏻


I’m passing on this one

I quite like what I’ve read by HD so will follow the discussion with great interest

I have loved almost everything I've read by Dunmore so will definitely get to this but feel the need for something soothing and calming with minimum emotional high stakes first so Barbara Pym's An Unsuitable Attachment is just the thing. It's old school Pym, just the sort of sunny vibe I like with vicars and librarians set in north London.

Look forward to your reaction RC


Let us know how you get on over here....


https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I just finished a re-read of Wuthering Heights, so I'm warmed up and ready to go!

At least you're all reading, I've been wallowing in K-dramas.

Korea is a fascinating place

Interesting that the doctor is called "Dr. Kenneth," the same as the doctor in Wuthering Heights.

I read this back in April, so maybe hazy recollections now. This was the fifth book of this author that I read, but did not find it good a read as the others. I did not feel for any of the characters, as I have done with her other books, so felt a bit let down. Just hoping that the unread ones will be more like the first four I read.

I loved this when I first read it, but I am finding it a slower read this time around. I also need to read the books I haven't tried yet, Jill.

I'm making a start on this: atmospheric beginning...

I am working in Bloomsbusy tomorrow and intend to tuck myself up in the reading room of a small museum I know there in my break and really get on with this and I keep starting and stopping.

Sounds like a lovely plan, Susan - I'm WFH today so will sneak in some reading time.

Good plan too, RC ;)

I'm finding this a slower read too, but am reading two others that are slow going as well, so maybe it's me. I'm about 25% in. Chapter three with the father was beautifully done!

Slow and also confusing with so much information withheld that the whole thing feels enigmatic. I see the blurb places this at the start of the twentieth century in the run-up to WW1 - I couldn't tell when it was.

Dunmore's writing is lovely at the sentence level but I hope there's something to engage me soon. I'm at the dance.

It all feels a little too self-consciously Gothic with a Bronte feel at the moment.

I agree. Feels like I'm floating from one image to the next in this one. Very striking images, some of them, but the parts in between can drag (like the dance).

And I agree with the self-conscious Gothic, but I'm not getting a Bronte vibe, as promised on the blurbs on the cover of my copy: ..."reads so much like Jane Eyre ..." Not for me. With Jane, we're put firmly in her shoes from the beginning, but Cathy? Tiny pieces of who she might be are revealed here and there but she's still a mystery, giving the story a precarious feel.

Oh, I don't have the Bronte blurb on my edition but I was struck by the doctor being described as like a 'tall black column' as I have the feeling Jane Eyre uses the same words when she first meets Mr Brocklehurst.

But I wasn't so much thinking of Jane as of the two children in a draughty old and cold house with unreliable adults like Wuthering Heights. Also governess vibes from The Turn of the Screw, though the narrator is inverted here.

I love your description, Kathleen, of the story having a 'precarious feel' - so apt.

I loved it first time round, but I'm not really feeling it second time around. It is feeling like a struggle and I am wondering why? Mood, age, time of life when read?

It's a mystery, for sure, how we react with books at different times. It's funny to remember that I hated Wolf Hall the first time I read it!

Roman Clodia wrote:


"I hated Wolf Hall the first time I read it"


That's just plain bizarre

Glad you saw the error of your ways RC

I know - now that's one of my favourite set of books ever!

Finished, with a bit of rushing towards the end as I wanted to be done with this. I really love Dunmore's writing on the sentence level but too many long descriptions of woodland and flowers seem to congest the story.

I also feel like we can see the workings and how the story is constructed using previous Gothic literary tropes. Nothing feels like it happens organically and characters just don't feel to breathe with recognisable emotions.

Not nearly as successful for me as some of Dunmore's later books but also not as bad as some of her other misses for me, such as the dire Counting the Stars.

I have also finished this now. Going by train into the City does help me add to my reading time!

Did it pick up for you, Susan? I ultimately didn't find this book convincing at all, it feels like it lacks the anchors of some of her other books and floats in some kind of literary space. Lovely writing though.

For me, it got much better about half way. When Catherine started commented on feeling strong (I think she was starting to take a little responsibility for the place, and growing up I suppose), then I felt I understood her more. After that, the story became propulsive, and I should finish today. I just needed a little grounding in the character, which I didn't have at all in the first half. Maybe it gave me an anchor, like you say, RC.

I'm not quite done, but should finish today.

Looking forward to your verdict Kathleen. I feel like I've overdosed this month on old, decrepit houses what with Brideshead, Hundreds Hall and now this!

That does sound like one old house too many!

I ended up liking it. I really wanted to be grounded in something at the beginning, but Catherine took more form for me as the story went on.

Your comment about the recognizable emotions is interesting to me, RC. I found myself relating to the sibling relationship--not the incest of course!--but the prior connection between the brother and sister. I felt something similar with my brother, a sense of you and me against the world, and that was my connection into the story. I certainly didn't expect to relate to this relationship! But I thought Dunmore gave it all an interesting treatment, and for me there was enough relatable stuff to go with it.

Maybe it's because I just finished Wuthering Heights, but this didn't feel like a Bronte story to me at all. For me it was more like To the Lighthouse, and also The Awakening.

Sorry I haven't replied earlier, I've been really busy.

It did pick up. I managed to finally read a good chunk of it and so I reengaged. It is a weird book though. I felt sorry for Cathy, and also somewhat confused about Kate. She was kind and supportive at times, especially with Cathy, but she also really kept her distance. She was never quite the mother figure that you felt Cathy wanted.

Kathleen wrote: "For me it was more like To the Lighthouse, and also The Awakening."

How fascinating as I didn't get those vibes at all!

I agree with you both that things solidify a bit more in the second half but for me the whole thing kept losing direction. As you say, Susan, I expected Kate to be one sort of element and yet was left hanging and a bit puzzled by her. The same with that weird and predatory governess.

I'm not unhappy to have read it as Dunmore's sentences are so graceful but definitely not one of my favourite books of hers.

Roman Clodia wrote: "The same with that weird and predatory governess ..."

I was expecting something to come out of the way the governess liked to dress and undress Catherine--something like that anyway, I can't remember exactly. Definitely predatory!

Yes, she was a very creepy governess! I could almost sense the children listening for the bicycle crunching up the drive...

And the governess is another of those Gothic elements which ended up fizzling out.

Yes, she really did. I was surprised that Cathy got away with that one with so few questions. It might have been more effective if she and Rob had been publicly accused.

Susan wrote: "Yes, she really did. I was surprised that Cathy got away with that one with so few questions. It might have been more effective if she and Rob had been publicly accused."

Yes, that's one of the places where I struggled to 'believe' the book - it just felt so contrived to me.

I agree about the fizzling out on several elements--definitely, although I thought of it as dreamy rather than contrived. My question is, did Cathy really do anything to the governess, or did she imagine it?

They passed it off as a heart attack. At the very least, I think Cathy swung the stick (?) wildly at her and may have hit her, the wound passing off along the many cuts and bruises she may have gained. She was not a nice lady and also predatory in her way. There is a lot about hunger in this book.

The children's grandfather barely looked at Cathy, who looked like her mother, but spent time with Rob. Miss Gallagher would never address Rob, but hungered over Cathy. Even Mr Bullivant seemed to confuse Cathy with a mother who had abandoned her and yet we could only infer why she left? Was something wrong between her and her father? Was this meant to be a sins of the family thing?

That's a very interesting question, Kathleen - I didn't see any indications that it was a dream or fantasy - is that what you're suggesting?

It would maybe have worked better for me if both the incest and death had been in Cathy's mind so that the book had been a study of isolation on a vulnerable imagination - but that's not how I read the narrative. Those big dramas contributed to me not finding the story convincing.

Susan, you've put your finger on all those unexplained undercurrents that are hinted at but which I never totally understood. I felt that Cathy was 'tainted' in the eyes of everyone by the behavior of her mother - I wasn't sure if that was connected to Rob's sexualised feelings for her?

She looked like her mother, so she was perhaps tainted by similarity? Yet Rob never seemed to be tainted by their father's instability, or breakdown? Unanswered questions. Sometimes, Dunmore is like that, but her novel Talking to the Dead is one of my favourite books ever. It too has weaknesses, but is definitely in my top 20.

I guess her mother going off and having a lover plays into that old, old, story of women being seductive and betrayers, like the archetypal Eve.

I haven't read Talking to the Dead so thanks for the recommendation. I really like her The Siege and the sequel, The Betrayal, also Your Blue-Eyed Boy, all of which were 5 stars from me.

Other people have not enjoyed Talking to the Dead, so I am unsure why I like it so much. I can't really recommend it, but it's one of those novels that I perhaps just read at the right time and it was the first of her books I read.

Roman Clodia wrote: "That's a very interesting question, Kathleen - I didn't see any indications that it was a dream or fantasy - is that what you're suggesting?"

Perhaps not a dream or fantasy, but there was a point later in the narrative where Cathy realizes she doesn't know exactly what happened--how much was real and how much imagined. Perhaps that was a way of Dunmore trying to keep it deliberately vague.

Susan wrote: "She looked like her mother, so she was perhaps tainted by similarity? Yet Rob never seemed to be tainted by their father's instability, or breakdown? Unanswered questions. Sometimes, Dunmore is lik..."

Yes, this reflected the times, I suppose, that Rob could get free of these things but Cathy couldn't. I felt like you--she was tainted by similarity. Not to be trusted. It was interesting how she did get closer to her grandfather in the end, when he had no one else, and when she had proved her willingness to stay, in conditions presumably much worse than the ones her mother endured.

I didn't mind the unresolved questions too much. I've only read The Siege, but I understand there's lots of diversity in her style that shows in different books, so I'm eager to read more.

She is a great author to discover, Kathleen. I will be interested to hear what others intrigue you.

Kathleen wrote: "I understand there's lots of diversity in her style that shows in different books"

That's true, for sure. It's quite unusual for a writer to straddle historical settings and the contemporary in the way that Dunmore does.

Thank you both. My next will probably be The Betrayal, to finish The Siege series, or Exposure, which a friend read recently and it sounds wonderful.

I loved The Betrayal - and finished it emotionally wrung out, as if I'd lived through the story myself.