This book was like a dream. Dunmore’s fluid style, her depictions of English countryside, and her oddly flawed characters all seem like things I have seen whilst sleeping. There’s a lazy quality here, something difficult to describe, but something which is nonetheless compelling and confusing all at once. Helen Dunmore clearly claims the Bront”an landscape, emotional as well as physical, as her territory. . . . Dunmore is wonderful at establishing a sense of place; you smell what she smell, se what she sees.”” Book Reporter Mostly the children run wild in the woods and there is a sense of nature, both bounteous and grisly in Dunmore’s atmospheric setting where images of violence against small animals recur. Miss Gallagher fears for Cathy, as does her grandfather, and at seventeen, Cathy is introduced to Mr Bullivant, the wealthy new owner of the neighbouring estate who is fresh from Italy. He collects art, is pleasant company and knows Cathy’s mother. He also worries about Cathy and encourages her to leave and see the world, but she would rather stay at home with her grandfather.

At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel. Helen Dunmore 1952–2017". The Poetry Society. Archived from the original on 3 January 2018 . Retrieved 3 January 2018. This was the first winner of the Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize for Fiction), and I found it very impressive. The atmosphere and setting reminded me of a couple of my favourite William Trevor novels ( Fools of Fortune and The Story of Lucy Gault - they share the decaying country house settings and the Anglo-Irish family settings, and they share the elegiac tone with darker overtones and the quality of the writing. The author makes great use of closed spaces: the ‘snow-house” where the first incestuous union occurs (p. 99); the little “cottage” where the abortion takes place (p. 185); the tiny “clearing” where Miss Gallagher dies (p. 203). What relation do these physical landscapes have to the country estate? How do they correspond to the emotional landscape of the characters? Can you think of other enclosed spaces to which the author might be alluding? British Orange Prize–winning Dunmore ( With Your Crooked Heart, 2000, etc.) mixes the spirits of T. Hardy, E. Bronte, and D. H. Lawrence to offer up a country tale of loss, madness, and deep secrecy—all with a vividness that’s luscious and unflagging.Shortlist announced". Walter Scott Prize. 24 March 2015. Archived from the original on 26 March 2015 . Retrieved 24 March 2015. A] dark, poetic and deftly crafted Gothic novel . . . Dunmore, also a poet, uses metaphor to paint painfully vivid images and manages to convey depths of emotion and meaning in remarkably short sentences. . . .” Dunmore crafts her prose into beautiful imagery. . . . Although the story’s setting is reminiscent of a Gothic classic, the novel has a current flair in Catherine’s self-awareness and observations, and in the psychological complexity of each character. . . . Distinctly modern.”” Associated Press

She attended Sutton High School, London [4] and Nottingham Girls' High School, then direct grant grammar schools.Dunmore] beautifully captures paranoia, how it feels to wonder if people smell guilt on your skin and’most powerfully”how you can rationalize an act until you convince yourself it never even happened. . . . [A] Gothic wonder of a novel.”” Salon Did it take chutzpah, to put words in the mouth of one of her literary heroes? Not really, she says: their story needed to be told. "We know the bare bones of what happened – but what was it like for him and Frieda in this landscape? The details intrigued me: Lawrence creating a garden, growing things like salsify, getting in tons of manure. He knew how to do practical things – the ironing, the washing – and his combination of day-to-day good sense and the life of the mind fascinated me. I felt there were some interesting things about that particular period and about what turned him against England." a b c d Kellaway, Kate (5 June 2017). "Helen Dunmore obituary". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 9 June 2017 . Retrieved 9 June 2017. 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. The author makes great use of closed spaces: the "snow-house" where the first incestuous union occurs (p. 99); the little "cottage" where the abortion takes place (p. 185); the tiny "clearing" where Miss Gallagher dies (p. 203). What relation do these physical landscapes have to the country estate? How do they correspond to the emotional landscape of the characters? Can you think of other enclosed spaces to which the author might be alluding?