A Spell of Winter (1996)
A quick intro
As promised, I’m going to be tackling the Women’s Prize for Fiction (known originally as the Orange Prize) alongside some other Booker and non-Booker related reading. Like my trawl through the Booker winners, I’ll be doing it in order, but unlike that particular marathon I won’t be doing it to the exclusion of any other reading, so you’ll see these come through a little less frequently.
As ever, I’m particularly keen to hear what readers thought about the winners, and any comments on my reviews are more than welcome. This time around, I’d particularly welcome any comments from, well, women. This is the Women’s Prize, after all, so I’m probably in honesty not the best qualified reviewer out there - I very much welcome constructive criticism of my constructive criticism :)
Who wrote it?
Helen Dunmore (1952 - 2017; active 1983 - 2017), born Beverley, Yorkshire, England. She studied English at the University of York, subsequently moving to Finland for two years and working as a teacher. She married lawyer Frank Charnley in 1980, and had three children and a number of grandchildren.
She published in a range of forms, beginning with a series of poetry collections in the 80s, before starting to write both children's books and novels in the 90s. Her first novel for adults, Zennor in Darkness (1993) won the 1994 McKitterick Prize for the first novel by an author aged over 40, before winning the Orange Prize for this, her third novel. She published a total of 15 novels for adults, as well as several series for young adults (including the Ingo Chronicles, which began in 2004). She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997.
She was posthumously awarded the Costa Book of the Year award in 2017 for her final poetry collection, Inside the Wave, a series of reflections on mortality written following her diagnosis with terminal cancer.
What's it about?
A Spell of Winter is a gothic novel set in wealthy rural England in the years before World War I. It focuses on two siblings, Cathy and Rob, who live with their grandfather after their parents have departed in initially mysterious circumstances. They are brought up mainly by a servant, Kate, and taught by their hated governess Miss Gallagher, who appears to have an unhealthy fascination with Cathy.
Growing up in relative isolation, the siblings' relationship becomes close and eventually sexual, with events becoming increasingly dramatic from that point on, particularly for Cathy. Rob and Kate both depart for Canada, and the advent of the Great War leaves Cathy ever more isolated, but at the same time more mature and pragmatic. By the end of the novel, there are hopeful signs despite all she has been through, as she reunites with her mother in France.
What I liked
While it’s laid on a little heavy-handedly, I did enjoy the Wuthering Heights vibes of this one. It certainly got the mood right, and was signposted as soon as pretty much the first two characters you meet are called Cathy and Kate. Oh, and we get a story about a corpse’s arm falling off within about the first page.
You wouldn’t need to be told that Dunmore had spent years writing poetry before moving onto novels. This is is beautifully written, dreamlike but lucid, poetic without being unduly flowery.
There are some impressively shocking moments in here. It’s a book that isn’t afraid to go to dark, uncomfortable places and it does so in a way that remains compelling in spite of the challenging subject matter.
Having jumped over to this following my run through 57 Booker Prize winners, it’s pleasing to be able to say that this felt genuinely different to anything I read in that sequence. An early proof of the necessity of showcasing different voices, as if one were really needed.
What I didn’t like
In some ways it felt a bit overly impressionistic, and there were strands of story that didn’t really seem to go anywhere. It seems to prioritise mood over plot, which is totally fine, but occasionally felt a bit unsatisfying.
The last section, taking in the whole World War I and then some, felt a little rushed. After all the drama of the preceding two thirds of the novel, it felt like this final third was a bit of an anticlimax.
It’s also kind of hard to see what we’re supposed to take from its conclusion - Cathy has been forced by circumstances into a maturity of sorts, but her reunion with the mother who abandoned her feels like something it would have been interesting to explore in more detail.
Food & drink pairings
Early on, the most lavish feast one can imagine
Later on, predominantly goat-based dairy products
Fun facts
As I've mentioned elsewhere, the seeds of the Women's Prize were sown in 1991, when that year's Booker shortlist featured no female authors, despite 60% of novels published that year being by female authors.
The introduction of the Women's Prize was inevitably not without controversy. A typically provocative Germaine Greer expounded that there would soon be a prize for "writers with red hair" and A. S. Byatt, winner of the 1990 Booker for Possession, called it "sexist" and unnecessary and refused to have her novels considered.
Some of the criticism, especially in those early years, was predicated on the idea that the prize was focused on specifically "female" subject matter - while many of those in favour of its introduction have flagged that it is nothing of the sort, rather an attempt to showcase great writing by women who had historically been sidelined by other prize panels, which were often dominated by men.
Unlike the Booker, which remained open only to British, Irish and Commonwealth winners until the mid-2010s, the Women’s Prize was from its outset open to women of any nationality.
Vanquished Foes
Julia Blackburn (The Book of Colour)
Pagan Kennedy (Spinsters)
Amy Tan (The Hundred Secret Senses)
Anne Tyler (Ladder of Years)
Marianne Wiggins (Eveless Eden)
I can already see that I’m going to have read even fewer of these books than from the Booker lists! Any tips from the above?
Over in the world of the Booker Prize, Graham Swift was picking up his lifetime achievement award… sorry, winning for Last Orders, which beat the likes of perennial Booker bridesmaid Beryl Bainbridge and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.
Context
In 1996:
Bill Clinton defeats Republican Bob Dole in US Presidential Election
1996 Summer Olympics takes place in Atlanta, US - blighted by a bombing incident that injures over 100
England hosts Euro 1996 football tournament, won by Germany who defeat the hosts in the semi-finals
Bombing at Canary Wharf in London brings IRA ceasefire to an end
IRA bombing devastates a large part of Manchester city centre
Dunblane Massacre in Scotland
Massacre of Hutus by Tutsis in Burundi
Indictment of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic for war crimes
Arrest of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski in Montana, US
Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania, Australia
Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party elected in Israel
Dolly the sheep is the first mammal to be successfully cloned, in Scotland
Release of Nintendo 64 console
Tamagotchi electronic pet-care toy is released in Japan by Bandai
Death of rapper Tupac Shakur, aged 25
Pulp's Jarvis Cocker disrupts Michael Jackson's performance at the BRIT awards in London
Oasis play largest gigs in British history at Knebworth
Aaliyah, One in a Million
The Fugees, The Score
Manic Street Preachers, Everything Must Go
Beck, Odelay
Spice Girls, "Wannabe"
First performances of Rent and The Vagina Monologues
Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Independence Day
The English Patient
Fargo
Life Lessons
Living in semi-luxurious isolation probably isn’t all that healthy
Score
8
A strong start for the fledgling prize, at least in terms of quality of writing. I scored 1996 Booker winner Last Orders 7/10, by way of comparison.
Ranking to date:
A Spell of Winter (1996) - Helen Dunmore - 8
… Fairly obviously
Next up
The next Women’s Prize winner will be 1997’s Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, but as my immediate next read I’ll be heading back over to Booker shortlists past for Hanya Yanagihara’s 2015-shortlisted A Little Life.
