Many people have spoken highly of Stella Gibbons’ The Woods in Winter (1970) – including when I ranked her novels. It comes very late in her body of work, though is almost entirely set several decades early than its publication date – and is one of several Gibbons’ novels that were republished by Dean Street Press. My parents kindly gave me a copy, and I finished it off for today’s book.
When I started the novel (when it was actually winter), I found the opening extremely promising. An unlikely friendship, of sorts, is struck up between middle-aged Ivy Gover and Helen Green, one of the people for whom Ivy is charwoman. Helen is gentle, intelligent, and moves in the literati without feeling fully confident there. Ivy, meanwhile, is fierce but fair, ruthlessly unsentimental (except perhaps about one of her three past husbands) and not very good at reading – which sends her to Helen when she gets a letter that she can’t decipher.
She [Helen] tried to get around her difficulties by murmuring the letter aloud.
“… Gardener, Elliot and Son, 24 High Street, Nethersham, Buckinghamshire… beg to inform you…”
“I don’t want nothing to do with beggars, Miss. Got no use for that sort. Bone-idle, mostly.”
“It doesn’t mean that kind of begging, Ivy. It’s just an old-fashioned way…” (here Helen was pulled up by remembering that, to Ivy, ‘old-fashioned’ would mean something quite different from what it would mean to herself) “… just a way of being polite.”
Ivy’s face said nothing and neither did her lips. But her eyes under the hat sent out an impatience to hear.
“… The late George Coatley, you great-uncle… deceased October the twenty-fourth… The cottage known as Catts Corner… vacant possession… leasehold… would be glad if you could call upon us at your convenience… They will then be pleased to hand over to you the key. And they sign themsevles your obedient servants.”
Helen looked up, tucking a plume of hair behind one ear with a slowly-moving finger.
“Reckon it’s a take-in?” Ivy demanded.
It is not a ‘take-in’, but you can see why Ivy is suspicious. Her life has not been one of good fortune or the generosity of man. This windfall is unexpected – and, once Ivy has visited the cottage, you’d be forgiven for seeing it as a mixed blessing. The home hasn’t been lived in for a while and it’s falling apart. It’s in the middle of nowhere, far from the city life she is used to. She would be totally isolated. And yet she craves all these things – in her no-nonsense, unsentimental way. She moves there.
And sadly we don’t see much more of Helen for the rest of the novel. I’ll confess I was disappointed that this unlikely pairing doesn’t get much space on the page – I thought it was very entertaining, as well as filled with potential to be eccentrically heartwarming. Instead, we are introduced to a whole host of other characters – Coral and Pearl Cartaret, who inexpertly run The Tea Shoppe; Angela Mordaunt, mourning her beau killed in war; the vicar; the Lord of the Manor. It all adds local colour, of course, but it also takes away from the central character, Ivy, who is left with a slightly predictable story about adopting an unloved dog – which does feel a bit of heavy-handed imagery.
I still enjoyed The Woods in Winter, but I had the problem I often have with Gibbons: she is so good at amusing, eccentric characters and the meeting of people who feel awkward with each other but grow into companionship. And then she ditches all that for a lukewarm romance story with some other characters, with very little at stake for the reader. (I’ve never got over how brilliant her novel Bassett started and how tedious it ended up. This one certainly isn’t that bad.)
Most readers seem to have fallen deeply for The Woods in Winter, and I wish I could have loved it more. It was an enjoyable novel but it could have been a really brilliant one – or perhaps I just mean that it could have been much more to my tastes. But I think I’m being a little more objective than that when I saw that the structure of The Woods in Winter doesn’t quite work – burgeoning out to a lot of characters in moments when narrowing in would have been more satisfactory. I’d certainly suggest you read Enbury Heath, Miss Linsey and Pa, or Westwood before you read this one – and, of course, Cold Comfort Farm. But I am quite an outlier on this one, so maybe try it and see for yourself!
That’s an observation of something that didn’t occur to me. Good review!