Review: Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher

I've read quite a few of Rosamunde Pilcher's novels, and I've found them patchy at times, but Winter Solstice stands out as one of her best.

It's about Elfrida, a retired and somewhat alternative actress, who decides to retreat to the Hampshire village of Dibton after the death of her lover. There she soon integrates into the local community, and meets Gloria Blundell, wife of Oscar and mother of Francesca. 

Oscar, a retired music teacher, is Gloria's second husband; they previously lived in London, but Gloria inherited the village manor house and they moved into it to give Francesca a better childhood. Gloria is wealthy and massively sociable. She takes Elfrida under her wing and is soon inviting her to numerous lunches, dinner parties and picnics. Elfrida is grateful, though she really likes Oscar and Francesca more than she does the slightly overbearing but well intentioned Gloria. 

Elfrida goes to spend a month with her cousin Jeffrey. Jeffrey has left his City job, his wife and his adult daughters and moved to Cornwall with the much younger Serena. They live a hand-to-mouth existence with their two young children - or at least, as hand-to-mouth as the upper middle classes get, as funnily enough they can still live in a charming clifftop cottage

When she gets back to Dibton, Elfrida discovers that Gloria and Francesca have been killed in a car crash. Oscar is consumed by grief, but also has a more practical problem - Gloria's sons from her first marriage want the house back. Oscar will have to leave. 

So off Oscar and Elfrida go - to a property the ownership of which Oscar shares with his dissolute and absent cousin Hughie. It's the Corrydale estate house in the small Sutherland seaside town of Creagan - ie Dornoch. 

Dornoch - image: visitdornoch.com

At first they live as hermits; they won't have Christmas,

'A lamb chop for lunch and no tinsel.'

but they are then joined by Jeffrey's daughter Carrie (brokenhearted, what a surprise!) and Carrie's niece Lucy, who have nowhere else to spend Christmas. Meanwhile Hughie, hopeful of a sale, has given the key to the house to Sam, a wealthy textile executive who's been asked to restore and revitalise the local textile mill, currently in a state of dereliction after a flood. So need I tell you that Sam - handily separated from his American wife - rocks up in a blizzard, finds the house very much inhabited, but ends up being invited to stay for Christmas too?

The stage is set, and the rest of the book (ie most of it) is about how these characters (and a supporting cast of locals) interact with one another. There are disappointments, arguments and a death, but there are also parties, pub visits, new friendships and new beginnings. 

Pilcher's writing in Winter Solstice is very good, so that I found myself able to set aside my usual irritation with all the coincidences and luck so fundamental to many similar novels. The main players are all well developed and engaging, though I did find Carrie far too good and beautiful to be true, and Lucy extremely naïve for a 14 year old who's grown up in London.

Lucy's selfish mother Nicola (Carrie's sister), who's interested only in her new American beau, and her self-absorbed grandmother Dodie, who'd rather spend Christmas at Bournemouth playing bridge than with her lonely granddaughter, were far more entertaining and identifiable, as I'm sure we all know people who are only too adroit at justifying their unattractive behaviour. Sam was also a bit too wonderful for words - what a people pleaser! But despite this, he, Carrie and Lucy were still interesting enough for me to keep reading.

Elfrida and Oscar were more convincing - Oscar unable to face the world, Elfrida struggling to help him. Their relationship seemed very real, if a bit old fashioned (eg Elfrida must get home to 'give him his lunch' - but then so must the much younger wife of the local vicar! I suppose this was written 24 years ago, but still, can none of these men make a sandwich?)

Pilcher has a very good ear for dialogue - at least the dialogue of the middle classes. Elfrida, Oscar, Carrie and Lucy all speak in that instantly recognisable code,

'Darling, it's bliss'

'If you felt very kind you could put a match to the fire.' 

'Oh, my darling girl!'

'Oh Alec (taxi driver), you've got the suitcases...would you be a saint and carry them upstairs for us?'

'What a perfectly sweet man.'

'Too stupid'

'How feeble!' 

And of course everything is 'splendid'

The more I think about it, I'm not entirely sure if Pilcher really did have an ear for this, or whether it was just the way she spoke so she thought everyone else did too. It certainly didn't ring true to me when she had an elderly working class lady who'd never left the local area also call something 'splendid' - I don't think I've ever heard anyone apart from estate owners say that in Northern Scotland. And Lucy, posh as she might be, is still a teenager. Have you ever heard anyone under 18 use the word? Lucy does.

Elfrida and Oscar are meant to be on their financial uppers, but of course that too is relative. They still see an Aga as something everyone has in their kitchen. They still have a housekeeper coming in several times a week, and when they need a tablecloth or a sheet, they talk about 'Mrs Snead's cupboard.'  Furthermore, Mrs Snead and her husband are supposed to be London Cockneys, and I really do wish Pilcher hadn't attempted to make them sound like that,

'Dreadful waste of good booze, I always thinks.'

 'Oh Arfur, you are a one!'

Urgh. And especially urgh because Pilcher never tries to make her local Scots sound Scottish (thank goodness.) 

But putting all these minor quibbles aside, Winter Solstice is a good story, I certainly wanted to know what would happen to all the players; how can Oscar raise the money to buy Hughie out? Will Sam make any headway with Carrie? Will Lucy have to go back to London? Pilcher manages to tie up all these loose ends in a satisfying - and not too contrived - way. 

Dornoch/Creagan and the Sutherland area are beautifully portrayed, I could see the loch, the beach, the hills and the town itself. I don't know if, by 2000, even Dornoch still had all the individual shops (ironmonger, bookshop, etc) that feature in Winter Solstice, but at least no one inherited one (as in the endless versions of The Little Cupcake Shop in the Cute Cornish Village' and variations thereon..). I liked the fact that the house was in the town, and was not some remote country pile with no facilities - basing the story in Creagan made the plot much more lifelike, and allowed Lucy to go out on her own, and Elfrida and Oscar to walk to friends' parties. In so many novels the characters drive somewhere, knock back vast quantities of alcohol, then drive back, or an isolated old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere is ridiculously romanticised instead of freezing, damp and smelly. 

And one more big bonus for me was Horace, Elfrida's rescue dog. Horace isn't a major player, but he's always there, and I liked the way he didn't want to set foot outside the door in cold weather. I was a little concerned that he'd end up on his deathbed, as animals in novels so often do, so I'm pleased to tell anyone who's as sentimental as I am that Horace is very much alive and well at the end of the book. 

Rosamunde Pilcher. Image: Diether Enflicher/Associated Press

My edition includes a few pages by Pilcher about her own childhood, spent mainly in Cornwall, to which her mother moved when her father went to work in colonial Burma. She writes with great honestly about the problems at home, her distance from her mother and sister, and the contrastingly idyllic times she spent with her best friend's family. It's easy to see how these memories informed parts of Winter Solstice, especially Lucy's story. 

So all in all, a good read and one I would recommend if you like family sagas, happy endings, and a largely Scottish setting. 

Winter Solstice by Rosamund Pilcher is published by Hodder and Stoughton.