Winter's Children

This was an impulse buy from my favourite quirky bookshop in Nafplio - the most beautiful seaside town in Greece - where I spend my summer holidays every year. Usually, impulse buys don't work well for me, and this was no exception. It is a novel that disappointed me, because I expected more. It started well, with a sudden death on Christmas Eve, and we were swiftly introduced to the raw beauty of the Northern English landscape, in the Yorkshire Dales. The story falls, primarily, in the Women's fiction genre, but it is enriched by the back-and-forth technique that takes to the 17th century during the Revolution of Cromwell and the Restoration days, then to the 19th century, bringings is to the end of the Second World War. Thus, six generations of the Snowden family come to the spotlight, the past and the present (2001) being tightly connected to each other.

I initially thought there was great potential in Winter's Children. Leah Fleming combined elements of the Historical fiction genre and the Contemporary really well. The historical plot is about 50% of the novel, but I believe that the contemporary section of the book fell short in comparison, due to the uninteresting plot and the characters. The Snowden ancestors, men and women, are very interesting, intriguing, and seem to have sprung out of the most beautiful British pastoral fiction. There are Christmas customs and myths, witchcraft, religious fights, and tragedy. On the other hand, the story set in 2001 is simple, predictable, and too melodramatic for my taste.

The characters are nothing special, really. Kay is an ever-grieving widow that falls into a sea of self-misery, and self-pity. Her young daugher, Evie, is selfish, spoiled and stubborn. Nik is practically useless, and his mother, Nora, is a hypocrite, someone who's always pointing the finger at everyone except herself, having caused misery to herself and her family with her life choices. The romance between a younger Nora and a German POW - who was so handsome, with a Grecian profile (yes, that is a descriptive sentence from the book), and strong, and kind, and gentle, and not at all a very recent enemy who had been ravaging the whole world for six years, and yadda, yadda - was sloppy and soapy, and ridiculous.

If it wasn't for the family saga story, the beautiful descriptions of Yorkshire during wintertime, and the haunting, witchy tales full of local lore and delicious superstition, I wouldn't have the patience to finish ot. However, if you like the Women's fiction genre with a well- structured Christmasy feel, then you may as well give Winter's Children a try.