Books
by Helen Dunmore
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A Spell of Winter |
This Orange Prize winner is beautifully written and kept my interest to the last page. The mysteries are intriguing, and only gradually are secrets revealed. Throughout the book there are hints of past and present dangers and at times I was almost afraid to read on and find out what was underlying everything that was happening. But . . . was it that I missed something, or were more questions left unanswered at the end than were explained?
(Julie Higgins - bwl 32 November 2005) |
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Birdcage Walk |
Against the ferment of the French Revolution, the novel is set in Bristol where a small group of idealistic radicals, including women, embraces the prospect of change. These are not the famous but ordinary people who leave no mark on history. Concurrent is the collapse of the building boom of Clifton's terraces because of the political uncertainty. Most important are the family relationships about which she writes so well and a mystery. Well worth reading.
Ed Note: Birdcage Walk does exist as a path leading through the overgrown graveyard of a Clifton church which was bombed in the Second World War. If you know Bristol, you will find yourself walking recognisable parts of the city with the author.
(Christine Miller - bwl 84 Spring 2017) |
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Exposure |
A must read for fans of this writer and for anyone who enjoys the intricacies, betrayals and subterfuges of the spy thriller. It is the height of the Cold War, at the end of a suburban garden ,a woman buries a briefcase, it's to protect her family but results in consequences she could not foresee . . . A perfect page-turner for the chaise-longue on a sun-drenched beach or in an English garden between the showers.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 81 Summer 2016) |
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Inside the Wave |
Dunmore was known as a novelist and poet but this, her final collection of poems, was the first I had read. It was by my bedside for many months. She faced death from cancer and explored the path towards it, caught inside the wave of living and dying. I was moved by her words and the simple beauty of her language. In the final poem, death gathers her up like a mother would a small child. I hope it was like that.
(Helen Dunmore died in June 2017.)
(Christine Miller - bwl 93 Summer 2019) |
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Mourning Ruby |
Mourning Ruby is a very moving book about the loss of an only daughter and the tragic effects it has on her parents, although it does have some failings. For example, I found that when it digressed about the mother's life, it didn't seem to be going anywhere and was disappointing.
(Laurence Martin Euler - bwl 25 August 2004) |
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Mourning Ruby |
A haunting, beautifully written novel involving rejection and loss, trust and friendship, the search for identity and meaning. It's a tale weaving stories within stories: an abandoned baby, a child killed in a road accident, the complexity of relationships in which the people involved might want to but do not share the same needs, perceptions and desires. A complex and rewarding read which despite its often harrowing subject matter ends on a note of optimism.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 35 July 2006) |
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The Betrayal |
Leningrad, 1952, under Stalin's grip Russians survive by keeping a low profile. Then Andrei, a young doctor, becomes involved in the treatment of a seriously ill boy, the son of a feared, senior secret police officer. As the child's health worsens Andrei, his colleagues and his family find themselves falling victim to the paranoiac power of the State machine. Told with her customary panache, this is a brilliant and terrifying sequel to The Siege (bwl 14).
(Jenny Baker - bwl 60 Spring 2011) |
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The Greatcoat |
1952, Yorkshire - Isabel Carey, newly married to an overworked doctor, struggles to adapt to her life, upstairs the endless pacing of a hostile landlady, nearby a deserted WW II airfield and hidden in a cupboard an RAF greatcoat which for warmth she lays on her bed. Then one night there is a tapping on the window . . . A delicious, elegant ghost story that like all good ones continues to haunt long after you turn the last page.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 77 Summer 2015) |
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The Lie |
WWI is over: Daniel, returns to a small Cornish town where, by obeying a dying old woman's wish, he becomes an outsider living on her smallholding, tending the land, feeding the goats, yearning to survive but all the time remembering . . . the horrors, the filthy mud, the smells and the guilt over the death of Frederick his boyhood friend who haunts him waking and sleeping. Intense and moving written in Dunmore's characteristic, lucid prose.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 74 Autumn 2014) |
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The Siege |
Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this novel centres on one family's efforts to survive the terrible privations which occurred during the German siege of Leningrad in WW II. Everyone I know who has read it, raves about it although I did have some reservations. It's harrowing stuff and yet maybe because it is so lyrical, there's a detachment about the writing almost as if there's a screen of glass between narrative and reader.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 14 July 2002) |
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Zennor in Darkness |
1917, Lawrence and his German wife seeking refuge from the war in the idyllic setting of this small Cornish village, meet and inspire Clare, a young artist, in love with her shell-shocked cousin. But rumours of spies are rife, U-boats lurk in the Channel, tongues wag, the peacefulness of the landscape is an illusion. Dunmore writes in her usual evocative style bringing her characters, their thoughts and feelings and the paranoiac atmosphere vividly to life.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 55 Winter 2010) |
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