- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Faber And Faber Ltd. (April 25 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0571225810
- ISBN-13: 978-0571225811
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.6 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #107,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This 1947 novel from the late Larkin, who was one of England's most distinguished poets, tells the story of a fateful winter day in the life of a European woman who has fled to England during WW II.
Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.Review
"'A Girl in Winter is a beautifully constructed, funny and profoundly sad book.' Andrew Motion"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
39 of 39 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful Period Piece, Nov 3 2001
By C. Gombar "christinagombar" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Girl in Winter (Hardcover)
In the middle of World War II, 22-year old Katherine Lind, a refugee from Europe is frozen in time and tragedy. Her past is gone -- family, friends, college life -- and she is living moment by moment, in a humiliating temporary library job, among the unfriendly aliens, somewhere in England.Six years before it was summer, and the world was at peace. On a lark, she's decided to take up her British pen pal's invitation to a three week stay in the Oxfordshire countryside. Robin Fennel puzzles and fasicinates her. The middle part of the book takes us back six years, to that idyllic time. Katherine and Robin's relationship does not fit into any standard romantic paradigm. It is all too subtle for that, and I'd love to see this exquisitely written novel turned into one of those wonderfully atmospheric films the British excell at.
Once again, it is good to read a World War II story, free of latter day cliches, and the teary-eyed romanticism typical of its own period. This book is rather more rewarding than Larkin's first effort, Jill, in that the lead character -- he does a wonderful job with a woman, by the way -- is more complex, mature and knowing than the hapless John Kemp of Jill.
There is also a hint towards a happy ending, though the ultimate outcome would depend on both characters surviving the war. A beautiful book and a pleasure.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
this book is on my desert isle list, Sep 22 2011
By Debra F. Monroe "Debra" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Girl In Winter (Paperback)
This is one of the most exquisitely perfect novels I have ever read. I said so to a friend, a woman, who'd read the infamous Andrew Motion biography of Philip Larkin, and she said: "It must be gruesome on the subject of women." Well, it's told from the point of view of a woman and it's heartbreakingly real, brave, and nuanced. I believed every moment. Its structure is so perfectly rendered, its mood both dark and yet shimmering with light. It's also one of the few books I've read set in England during the war that's willing to depict a sense of desperation and fatalism. So many books set in England during the war were written many years later, with the inevitable airbrushed nostalgia. Not this one. It's a glimpse of a suspended moment in time, the likes of which most of us are lucky to never have experienced. This is one of the best 10 novels I have ever read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Larkin's imagery as divine revelation, April 8 2012
By Patrican - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Girl In Winter (Paperback)
The writing in this book is so good that it kept me up way past my bedtime, despite that I twice put the book down firmly, determined to leave some for tomorrow. The story line itself is remarkably gripping; it's mostly in a woman's head, what she's thinking and what she's doing about what she's thinking. But of course, it's here presented by a male author, so its authenticity is suspect. In any case, the story line is only a scaffold on which to drape the imagery in the sentences. The imagery is throw-away, scattered everywhere about in the sentences. Some of it is door-opening. Just open the book to any page and start reading.I don't know why Larkin didn't continue with novels, but it does seem to me that A Girl in Winter fails at establishing a background ambiance. The title contains the word 'winter,' and the story is set on a cold winter day in WWII black-out England. Some paragraphs convey details of the cold and the dark, but somehow I didn't come away remembering any feeling of cold or dark. The book doesn't "place" you, in the way that Conrad can put you in a storm at sea, or isolated in an upriver Indonesian clearing. It may be because Larkin breaks the winter day into two parts that bookend a long flashback to a summer holiday. But I suspect that it's caused by the metaphorical imagery in the book: it is so pervasive, and so vivid, that even the cold and the dark are taken to be properties of the soul, or of life itself. Larkin uses language in realms far from where it was invented. After he transported me to a view of those realms, I was very reluctant to return.
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