Shortlisted for the Best of the Orange Best 2010 by the Orange Prize Youth Panel.
Winner of the 1996 Orange Prize for Fiction. This is a marvellous novel about forbidden passions and thwarted love by one of the UK's finest writers. A Spell of Winter won the prestigious Orange Prize and deservedly so given its lyrical writing without a word out of place. You'll also be completely captivated by the skilfully crafted characters and by the love story and eventual redemption.
'Tense, dark and intensely gripping . . . written so seductively that passages sing out from the page ' Sunday Times
Cathy and her brother, Rob, don't know why they have been abandoned by their parents. Alone in their grandfather's decaying country house, they roam the wild grounds freely with minds attuned to the rural wilderness. Lost in their own private world, they seek and find new lines to cross.
But as the First World War draws closer, crimes both big and small threaten the delicate refuge they have built. Cathy will do anything to protect their dark Eden from anyone, or anything, that threatens to destroy it.
'An electrifying and original talent, a writer whose style is characterized by a lyrical, dreamy intensity' Guardian 'Stops you in your tracks with the beauty of its writing' Observer 'Has a strong and sensuous magic' The Times
'Her spellbinding, lyrical prose is close to poetry' Daily Mail
'An intensely gripping book...written so seductively that some passages sing out from the page, like music for the eyes' - Penny Perrick, Sunday Times
'A hugely involving story which often stops you in your tracks with the beauty of its writing - Carol McDaid, Observer
'An electrifying and original talent, a writer whose style is characterized by a lyrical, dreamy intensity' - Marianne Brace, Guardian
Author
About Helen Dunmore
Helen Dunmore was the author of fourteen novels. Her first, Zennor in Darkness, explored the events which led to D H Lawrence’s expulsion from Cornwall (on suspicion of spying) during the First World War. It won the McKitterick Prize. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize, now the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction. Her bestselling novel The Siege, set during the Siege of Leningrad, was described by Antony Beevor as ‘a world-class novel’ and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize.
Helen Dunmore’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and she was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She died in June 2017.
