It’s hard to relegate such an important world event that clearly impacted these characters immensely to a mere chapter in their lives, but I do wonder whether the backdrop of this particular time period actually adds anything to the story. You gotta have a long attention span for this one and a good eye for detail, both of which I can have when I'm suitably interested, but this one just didn't do it for me. There is a war mentioned in this book and while they don't actually name the war at all, I'm guessing it may be world war one?

As adults, Cathy and Rob's relationship begins to develop into something forbidden, and it sets off a tragic chain of events that spread into the years of the First World War. Because of this, and also the beauty of the prose, it reminded me very much of To the Lighthouse, which I loved the first time for its revelations, but found frustratingly hard to follow on my second read. Dunmore presents the reader with a masterpiece of characterization full of human intrigue and desperation, and this is the area in which she succeeds without question.Rob just flounces off to Canada for no particular reason, and then he comes back and goes off to the war and we never find out what happened to him? We see events through the eyes of Cathy - a young girl who so resembles her mother that her grandfather can hardly bear to look at her, while their governess, the boy hating Miss Gallagher, harbours an obsessive and unhealthy love for her. But when that relationship begins to break down, Catherine alone must reconstruct the fragments of her life. But there are too many long descriptions of woodland and flowers (so many flowers) that make the pace sluggish and congest the text.

There were parts earlier in the book when I felt that it was really too long, and the incest and abortion in the middle was squicky, and also quite an odd reading experience given that I'd inadvertently bagged two reads in a month featuring sibling incest - what? This was the first winner of the Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize for Fiction), and I found it very impressive. Her family is falling apart as fast as the manor they live in, leaving Cathy and her brother Rob to parse rumors and secrets for the truth of their missing parents.Set largely in the build up to WWI, the story is narrated by Catherine, a young woman who feels increasingly cut off from the outside world. During this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. The characters are distinctly peripheral; each one demonstrates a hazy carelessness, drifting along in a fog of apathy.

I enjoyed reading this a lot and this probably doesn't say as much as it should - even though I read a lot, there's very few books that can make me settle down with one for hours, or make me think about it when I'm not reading it. I felt like I was being a little picky lowering my rating for that shift at the end (especially since I wasn’t the first one to get there and KNEW it was coming). Her writing is so powerful and evocative it enables her to depict the dark events in this novel as something beautiful and real. As the book progresses, nature begins to reclaim the old mansion, and Catherine finds satisfaction and meaning through her work on the land.Catherine – like her mother before her – takes charge of her life in unexpected ways that defy social convention. I read this book knowing little of the the plot, and I encourage others to avoid summaries of the novel that reveal far too much.