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- General fiction - |
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Winter Solstice |
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 Winter Solstice byRosamunde Pilcher St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books 464 pages, August 2000 Reviewed by Susan McBride Elfrida Phipps is a 62-year-old woman with a past as bright as her shock of unnaturally red hair. Having recently lost her married lover to a fatal illness, she has taken refuge in the village of Dibton in Hampshire, England along with Horace, a mutt she rescued from the pound just before leaving London. Elfrida’s aim is for a quiet rest-of-her-life. However, fate has other things in store for her. In Dibton, Gloria and Oscar Blundell take Elfrida into the bosom of their family. Gloria, a woman of wealth, had married Oscar, a former schoolmaster and church organist after the death of her first husband. Though she has adult children from her first marriage, she and Oscar have a daughter together named Francesca. Twelve years old and freckle faced, she is the joy of Oscar’s life and charms her way into Elfrida’s heart as well. But again, the road is never without potholes, not in reality nor in the deft hands of Rosamunde Pilcher. Pilcher’s strength is in her characterizations. Elfrida, the good-hearted soul, is at the center of the book and is the glue that binds together the rest of the cast - including Oscar; her second-cousin Carrie so recently wounded by love; Carrie’s 14-year-old niece Lucy who’s trying to find her niche in the world; and Sam, a man nearing 40 whose marriage has failed at a time when he wants to settle down. All end up together at the Estate House in Creagan, Scotland for Christmas. Pilcher lovingly describes the small seaside village from its golden sandstones, walled gardens, trees and church with its tower capped by a golden weathercock. Like The Shell Seekers and September before it, Winter Solstice is not a novel to be rushed through, but to be savored. Elfrida, Oscar, Carrie, Lucy and Sam are people you’ll feel you know and know well by book’s end. Enjoy it in your hammock beneath a shady tree on a warm summer day or curled up in a chair by the fire on a crisp winter’s night. Either way, you’ll be in fine company. |
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