Winter Solstice

 

Winter Solstice / Rosamunde Pilcher 
NY: Thomas Dunne, c2000.
454 p.

I just finished this one, read over the winter holidays. The book features a lot of snow and storms over the solstice week in Scotland -- I read it during a particularly bad winter storm here, just after Christmas week. It felt quite apropos! 

This one was published in 2000 -- I didn't read it then, in fact, I haven't read any of Pilcher's books before. It was a fun thematic read but it is a bit dated now. There are some plot points that stood out to me like a sore thumb -- the way that hetero relationships seem to be the cause and endpoint of every character's story, the way that Elfrida, one of the main characters, is continually cooking and cleaning for her new partner (and no-one even remarks on it), the way that a 14 yr old girl is taken under the wing of an 18 yr old male neighbour and everyone is fine with it - even if it does turn out to be innocent it's a bit odd now. And so much booze! 

Despite these slightly jarring elements of a book that's not really very old, I did like this one. It was warm and expansive and had lots of good bits. It starts out as a bit of a downer; Elfrida, a self-described washed up actress, moves to the country. She makes new friends of her neighbours Gloria and Oscar; things happen and she leaves the south of England with Oscar to go stay in an Estate House he half owns in Scotland. Another storyline: 14 yr old Lucy is a awkward addition to a home where nobody really wants her. Her Aunt Carrie comes home from the continent after a disappointment in love, to find her sister (Lucy's mother) wanting to spend Christmas in Florida, their own mother swanning off to Bournemouth, and nobody to look after Lucy at all. Carrie calls up her distant cousin Elfrida to see if she and Lucy can come to them. This adds much more of a Christmas vibe to Elfrida's season. 

And into that household of odd souls comes Sam, a businessman sent to Scotland to revitalize an old woolen mill. He gets snowed in, following a series of events, landing at the Estate House -- and he has more connections to the household than first realized.  

The story is replete with holiday parties, upstanding locals, the nearby vicar and his family, Christmas cooking and decorating and present giving, small dramas, love and relationships, and lots of house talk. The Estate House, another small cottage on the former estate grounds, descriptions of the rooms, the decor, the coziness or lack of, the proportions etc. Even the local church is described. Just the kind of old-fashioned saga that is good reading for snowed-in cozy days.