Kate Mosse "The Winter Ghosts" (Orion)
This was a very fast-paced gripping read. I finished it in a couple of days.
Set in the AriŃge region of France, nearly a decade after the end of the first World War, the main character Freddie - still desperately struggling to come to terms with the death on the battlefields of France of his beloved older brother George - ends up in an isolated village in Haute Vallee of the Pyrenees.
In Nulle it is the Feast of St. Stephen. Freddie is invited to the celebrations and, though still reeling from a near-death car accident and the unsettlingly strange sights and sounds he experienced on his desperate scramble through the dark mountain forests down to the village, he decides to accept. Here, at the antique celebration of the festival he meets the lovely Fabrissa to whom he finds he can bear his soul and unburden his heart of the terrible feelings of loss he has suffered alone now for so many, many years.
The Winter Ghosts purports to be a ghost story and I suppose on the surface it is. However, it is more than that .... the telling of the historic end of the Cathars in southern France. The book is about extreme melancholia: the pain and anguish and constant torment of grief not understood. It is through the horror of Fabrissa’s story that Freddie is transformed. By his experience in Nulle he at last finds the ability to embrace life rather than dwell among those who have died.
I enjoyed reading it for the atmosphere that was created, and the desciptions of post war France, and how people were affected by the war. It is not action packed, but reads quickly and was engrossing , with beautiful writing.
