Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later. The other reason this book came alive for me is that Cathy was such a fascinating, sympathetic, well-developed character, and the depth of emotional complexity that Dunmore was able to excavate with this book was staggering. This book is about sexuality, societal restraints, and female agency, all examined through the lens of one woman's fraught relationship with her own family inheritance. It all sounds like a rather standard female-centric historical fiction novel, but Cathy's journey and Dunmore's psychological insights took on a hard edge that subverted all of my expectations and then some.

I think of the spittle running down the side of old Semple's mouth and hanging in his rough beard. The beard is greyer than the hair on his head. It is a dirty ash grey, and bobbles of spittle tremble in it with the trembling of old Semple's body. He has always been clean-shaven, but he will not let his wife shave him now. With both parents gone, Catherine and Rob go and live with their grandfather in a mansion and befriend the helpers there. Eventually Catherine and Rob develop feelings for each other and the relationship becomes close. This leads to consequences and repercussions Catherine has to go through.Both servants fiercely guard the mysteries of the family heritage from Rob and Cathy. This inverts common behavior, resulting in outsiders who are better informed about the family than the family itself. What effect does this have on Cathy? Rob? Oh, eight or so. A little younger than you and a little older than this one,' she said, tapping my head. She leaned forward and poked the fire. 'These muffins are like leather. Away down to the kitchen, Cathy, and ask Mrs Blazer for fresh.' This novel was the first winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996. I bought it after the book blogger Simon Savidge and his wonderful mother, Louise Savidge, started reading past winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction. The Orange Prize became the Bailey's Prize in 2012 and after 2017, the Women's Prize for Fiction. For the past two years, I have read a number of the longlisted titles, and look forward to the nominations and awards. On one hand I liked the way the novel is insightful: Catherine’s state of mind when she finds out that the world is changing, the minute descriptions of all the characters and the little twists and turns in the narrative. yet, I found this book to be dull. I know the characters go through a lot but I felt nothing for them. Although I do like good writing, it does cross that fine line into being overwrought – sometimes the melodrama is amped up and other times it goes into overload. Dunmore's writing is the star of the show here: gorgeously lyrical, evocative and atmospheric, alive with startling imagery and unexpected conjunctions. But there are too many long descriptions of woodland and flowers (so many flowers) that make the pace sluggish and congest the text.

All these different disciplines – fiction, poetry, short stories (she's published four collections to date), children's novels – do they come from the same place? "I see them as connected but different: I know this is a novel and this is a poem, or a short story. How and why I'm not sure, but it's always blindingly clear. Poetry is the most different, because poems use all the musical properties of language – but on the other hand, working as a poet has definitely helped me with the pacing in my novels. I'm very much one for the grip, the pull-through, that narrative energy and propulsion, and I think poetry teaches you about that."Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children’s author and poet who will be remembered for the depth and breadth of her fiction. Rich and intricate, yet narrated with a deceptive simplicity that made all of her work accessible and heartfelt, her writing stood out for the fluidity and lyricism of her prose, and her extraordinary ability to capture the presence of the past. Well, are you going or not?' she demanded impatiently. 'It's you that's eating these muffins, not me.' There’s an intense scene in the book after which Catherine is unsure of what really happened. The writing reflects that kind of state of mind: an uncertainty as to what is real and what is imagined.

It had a silver shine on it,' said Kate, 'like the shine on money. But underneath the flesh was puffed up and purple. And the hand was swollen bigger than any hand I'd ever seen.' First and foremost, Dunmore’s prose is stunning. With her sumptuous use of words, she evokes a rich, gothic setting, and a quietly sinister and claustrophobic atmosphere that I adored. Her characters are complex, difficult to root for and yet oddly sympathetic for all their flaws. By presenting them and their often deplorable actions without judgement, she asks us to question human boundaries, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions in many instances.In a review in The Washington Post, American writer and academic Nicholas Delbanco described A Spell of Winter as "an erotic pastoral". [3] He said it is "heady Gothic stuff" reminiscent of Brontë's Wuthering Heights. A less experienced author may have turned this into a "romantic melodrama", but Delbanco stated that Dunmore's "authoritative telling" has produced a "haunt[ing]" tale. [3]