Helen Dunmore writes lovely books for young girls, that goes without saying. Even a mushroom like the moose, ultimate or not, was fascinated enough to eat this book in one gulp with no water. If you have a daughter, especially anywhere in-between 8-13 years old, this is a perfect gift guaranteed to have your child reading madly, with her cheeks flushed and mouth slightly agape. For just a few pennies, "Zillah & Me" gave the old mushroom of a moose so much sunshine... You sure you wouldn't like to share a mysterious ride back into the times when you were a young, small mushroom?

Katie and her mom have to leave their house London and travel to Cornwall. A new fish in the pond, Katie half-expects to be a stranger, the new one, which everyone stares at much like a raven at a bone. However, with her sunny character, she does not give it much thought, as at present there are things that worry her much more:

"If you need the toilet you have to go downstairs, out of the back door, then down the path to the outside toilet at the bottom of the garden. Can you believe that we've come to live for a whole year in a cottage without an inside toilet? In fact there is no bathroom at all. There's a sink in the kitchen where we can wash, and a tin bath that Mom says we can fill with hot water from the stove.

'We'll light a fire, and have our baths in front of it. It'll be really cozy. Just imagine, Katie, a bath by firelight.'

Hmm. I can see that we won't be having baths too often. I think of the power-shower in our house in London and feel a pang of homesickness. My friends would kill me if they knew that the first thing I missed was the shower. But at least we've got running water, and electricity, so I can read in bed. Imagine if we only had candles... But the outside toilet is going to be a problem. The spider angle was the first thing I checked out. My findings were:

1. an exceptionally large black spider crouched on top of the toilet door, ready to zoom down as soon as anyone got comfortable;

2. a nest of spidelings in the corner, waiting to turn into large spiders and join their mom on top of the door;

3. (last-minute discovery) a small brown spider with very hairy legs crouched inside the toilet roll, waiting for me."

Katie meets Zillah, a local girl, daughter of her mom's good old friend. Initially, the girl seems to be very unpleasant, closed in her own shell, but our goodhearted Katie does not give up, being more mystified than offended, and so begins the uneasy acquintance, which over time transforms into a great friendship, cemented by a great secret the two of them share. Yes, says the old mushroom of a moose (when I was at Katie and Zillah's age, I thought the age of 30 was much like being a prehistoric fossil. Well, didn't you?), yes - that's exactly what one can expect from girls. Secrets! Always secrets, haha. The old mushroom of a moose is smiling as he writes these words, being as far from serious as he can get, for due to this lovely little book he was just transformed into a little boy, feeling the unmistakable scent of the world, the scent of childhood. Moose is an old grump - by golly, almost thirty years old, but he sure can enjoy a good, bright story like "Zillah & Me", and can only wish he had his own children to tell these stories to, or read aloud much like Katie's mom in the Cornwall cottage, by the fireplace...

Zillah & Me is a book that everyone would give 5 stars to because there are so many exciting events happening in this book. Katie was a girl who lived in London, she was so happy until... her father died. He was working on a ladder and the ladder fell backwards and when he was put in the ambulance he died. Then Katie and her mom moved to the country where her friend Janice lived. Janice let her live in a cottage that her aunt lived in. Jancie had a daughter, Zillah, who is about Katie's age but she has an attitude problem. Katie has to figure out what Zillah is so upset about. And it's your turn to figure it out! Read the sensational book to find out what Zillah is hiding and how Katie will help her.

This novel offers a penetrating account of the Bristol and London underworlds through the eyes of a young woman. Always a writer with an astonishing eye for the right detail, Helen Dunmore's characters are engaging enough to pull you into her narrative world and dangerous enough to make you wonder what she'll do next with them. This novel is about sexual awakening, power and class, and all with a touch light enough to make you think it's not tackling any of the big themes at all.

Once I got past the rather slow opeing chapters, I could not put this book down. It is beautifully written and interestingly constructed. Chapters are written alternately from the perspective of each main character and yet flow together nicely, providing an intimate portrait of the inner feelings of each character. The book is as painful as it is compelling. Each adult character is very human and flawed in some tragic way and events play out accordingly. Everyone wishes that everyone else were different, and then everything would be all right. Wishing doesn't make it so, however, and the plot continues relentlessly to its tragic conclusion. Dunsmore is a wizard with language. She has an incredible talent for making you feel that you've lived inside the heads of her characters. She can paint pcitures with words so vivid, they are almost cinematic. I definitely recommend this book!

WITH YOUR CROOKED HEART is a journey into the feeling and lives of three exrtremely different people whose insides are torn and compelling. The book should be read and then the reader can go backwards and read TALKING TO THE DEAD. These two books are written by the most intelligent, decisive, and informative female author that exists today. It will be difficult to put either of these books down, so make certain you allow enough time to "get away" and delve into a strange and heartwrenching world.

I bought this book for an 8-year-old child whose parents recently had quadruplets, but decided not to give it to her, partly because I think it is intended for the 12-and up age group. I thought that the combination of disasters that hit this family overshadowed the theme of the quadruplets (for example, the father loses his job and they are pushed to poverty, which gives a whole new dimension to the issue of multiples). It just didn't ring true. And if they were as hard up as the book sounds, the solutions that appeared for the father could never have pulled them out.

I would find this book more appropriate and helpful for a child dealing with a loss of family income and status than a child dealing with a change in family size. I guess what I am trying to say is that this book took on too much. And if you gave it to a new big sister or big brother, it might bring up fears they didn't have before they read the book.

Also, the protagonist was not terribly likeable or sympathetic; instead of seeing the struggle a parent made to be there for her, she balked at the embarrassment of the multiple babies. I just didn't buy the general negative attitude of the girl toward her siblings (although of course by the end she has "grown" and come to terms with it) or the negative attitude of others in the community. In my experience, communities are very positive, supportive, and excited at least when a multiple birth first happens. That said, there is a very sweet situation where a neighbor helps out without being obvious about her charity.

If you had a child who was already feeling sorry for herself and neglected due to a multiple sibling situation, this could help, because the child would not feel alone with these feelings. But if you had a child who was basically feeling positive about the situation but needed some support, I think it would be better to get some sitters and take the child out one on one than provide them with this book.

A little bit of sunshine didn't hurt anyone. I have come back to the bright days of primary school, with all those important affairs, and that indescribable feeling of being able to live forever just as I was. I preferred to read Jules Verne, "Three Musketeers", "Winnetou" or Moomins, but then I never shied away from so-called girls' books. Now I can boast myself that I read all books of the "Anne of Green Gables" series when I was small. Now, having fallen in love with Helen Dunmore's prose (I have recently read a good old fashioned novel, "A Spell of Winter", by this author), I decided to look what else she might have written. I didn't hesitate much to buy "Brother Brother, Sister Sister", since I had a hunch that it was going to be a light, bright and shiny humorous book that would take about 20 years' burden off my back. And so it did!

"(...)And I didn't really want to go out in the playground anyway, because I'm still not talking to Rachel and it's so boring, not talking to people when you have to keep remembering about it, and everybody else keeps remembering about it and giving you little looks when you go near the other person you're not talking to.

(...) Then I saw a flicker of Rachel's red skirt. She'd just come in with Clare to get something out of her drawer. She was not looking at me in the careful way you have to not look at people if you want it to look as if you're not looking at them."

Wouldn't you be? Hey, if you have a daughter, she'll familiarize with Tanya, the heroine - in an instant. That book is all about daughters. What do we have here? Tanya is writing her diary, ever so seriously, and it just happened that her dad lost his job, and her mom gave birth to quads. And so the story begins. Very funny events, lots of lovable mess, and of course playground friendship tangles to untangle. Lovely book, I tell you.

If you love to read here is a book for you.This story is about a girl about 11 years old whos mom just had four babies and she dose not seem to have any more time for her. When she gets the lead role in a school play her parents cant come. So in the middle of the play her dad comes and waits out side the window and embarrises her she loses her lines. I think this is a great book to learn how to apprechate your parents.

Dunmore does manage to powerfully recount the lives of ordinary people during one of history's lesser known tragedies, as well as encompass some of the vast nature of the siege, and does a good job of fleshing out her characters. However the book relies too much on the drama of the events themselves to provide conflict and dramatic weight rather than the moral choices of the characters themselves.

The Siege itself, and the struggles of ordinary people, are important to remember and to recount, and more than a non-fiction book might, this book does give readers a window into a remarkable time - for this I do recommend it. But in the end, it's not as compelling, nor does it has as much depth, as I had hoped. I kept expecting something more to occur - some sort of story above and beyond the struggle for survival - but was disappointed.

If readers wish to know more about the Siege of Leningrad from an ordinary person's point of view, I highly recommend "Siege and Survival" by Elena Skrjabina, a survivor. This powerful and affecting diary is out of print, but should be in libraries or used.

I can't give it five stars, because while I very much enjoyed the book while reading it, whenever I stopped, I didn't want to start again. Probably that has something to do with the hopeless and depressing tone of most of the novel, and is therefore not a fair reason, but I like books that grab and won't let me go until I turn the last page. This one grabbed me, but I kept wanting to put it down anyway.

About the depression: don't let it put you off too much. THE SIEGE is extremely well written, and it's amazing power lies mainly in Dunmore's uncanny ability to detail the harsh effects of war (namely hunger and desperation) on ordinary people. There are small overtures to hope, especially near the end, but for the most part, Dunmore has set out to overwhelm and horrify and possibly frighten us, and she has succeeded, painfully. She even managed to make me feel guilty for having more than a piece of bread to eat every day, for never having known the desperation of boiling wallpaper paste and chewing on leather to extract what few nutrients it might yield. This is stark, almost hurtful, and amazingly good writing.

Set during the blockade of Leningrad in World War II, Ms. Dunmore's novel "The Siege" attacks and bombards our sensibilities as no other book in recent memory. Beginning with the Nazi attack of Russia on June 22, 1941, the story examines and portrays the ordeals of the Levin family as they struggle to stay alive and keep their humanity during the longest siege and blockade in modern warfare. Initially, the Levins are caught between the excesses of Stalin's purges and the fury of the German attack. Quickly, the enemy becomes the shelling, the starvation and the cold. Dunmore's prose travels deep within the emotions, fears and thoughts of the characrters to illuminate suffering as no other historical tract has rendered. The voices of all her characters speak to us and transfer us to an umimaginable time when madness and cruelly ruled. Dunmore gives the reader enough of the historical context of the Siege of Leningrad (Luga defenses, Pavlov's rationing, "road of life" across Ladoga, etc;) for our sense of time and place, but the book primarily examines the emotions and human politics of survival.

While her language is direct as a bullet, there is a smokey-poetic quality to it that curls around our senses and forces a painful understanding. Yet, there is no saccharine sentimentality to her narrative, nor are we seduced with maudlin pathos or pity. She punches us with her descriptions and compels us to look at suffering and survival and seek meaning where there seems to be only despair, self interest and cruelly. "The Siege" is at once troubling and uplifting; ugly and fair; compassionate and cruel. As deep as our hearts, it is a book for our souls.

On a personal note, I have stood at the mass graves of Piskarevskaya many times seeking some insight into the sacrifice. I have even written a screenplay ("The Large Hearts of Heroes") in an effort to understand both the historical and personal truths. But in the end I stand in the Cementery with my Russian friends, listening to the stilled voices frozen long ago and waiting for redemption.

You know the saying: you can't tell a book by its cover. As a reviewer, I don't take looks too seriously but I have to admit this is one cute package: a slim vanilla volume covered by a shiny dust jacket with candy-colored stripes and a picture of an (empty) ice-cream dish. It is almost edible.

In fact, the title story wasn't by any means my favorite --- it's a sort of glamorous throwaway about the suppression of appetite and its greedy return. But Dunmore, who is also a poet, writes so sensuously and precisely that she can make nearly anything matter. Best known as the author of elegant, pared-down psychological thrillers like TALKING TO THE DEAD and WITH YOUR CROOKED HEART, she has recently ventured beyond that genre with THE SIEGE, a novel set in the USSR during World War II. And now comes this collection of 18 stories --- none of which, as far as I can make out, have been published previously.

Stories aren't usually my thing, except when they're by Alice Munro or Katherine Mansfield. If they move me, I want more; I want to be immersed for days (if possible) in a world of somebody else's making. Still, there is something thrilling about the way a story can begin with a moment and then open up to an entire life --- but subtly and concisely, so you get only the details you need and not the entire family tree. Dunmore seems to know instinctively just how much to tell: not so much that the narrative loses pace and edge, not so little that it becomes annoyingly cryptic. And her talent is such that ICE CREAM, although uneven in quality (short-story collections inevitably are), lives up to its name. I wanted to devour it all at once and had to make myself take it in slowly, bite by voluptuous bite.

Dunmore's sense of language is extraordinary: lush, unhackneyed and rhythmic. She has a way of getting inside a character's head and making herself at home there; the stream of sensation, memory and ephemera is perfectly believable. In "You Stayed Awake With Me," two friends, one of them ill, revisit a childhood summerhouse --- and some past betrayals. "Pain is a climate like winter," the sick woman thinks. "It closes over you and soon you can't imagine not living in it. Some days, when I wake, before I move, I pretend to myself. I think I've got away. I'm stepping off a plane into a different climate where warm, spicy breezes blow your clothes against your thighs. I'm walking so lightly and easily that it feels like flying." "The Lighthouse Keeper's Wife," one of the best stories in the book, presents us with a man in mourning whose conversation with himself becomes our lens for a woman's hard, isolated, sturdy life: "Slowly, methodically, he would climb the lighthouse tower, toward the light, thinking of her. A mound of sea thudded against the tower, then fell back and weaseled at the foot of the rock, getting its strength. Nancy said she did not mind thinking of him in the lighthouse, no matter how bad the storms, but what she kept out of her thoughts was the moment when he was brought off the landing-platform, with the sea hungry for him and the lighthouse tender pitching. ... It made her sick to think of it, she said, though he knew she could walk to the edge of the cliff and stand there without a moment's dizziness."

There is no theme as such in ICE CREAM; the eclectic mix suggests a conscious effort to show off Dunmore's range, which is impressive --- from the futuristic bite of "Leonardo, Michelangelo, Superstork" to macabre fables like "Emily's Ring" and "The Clear and Rolling Water" to gentler vignettes that release sweet moments of transcendence ("Swimming Into the Millennium"; "Be Vigilant, Rejoice, Eat Plenty"). But I think her most original stories are darker. They are about the courage, craziness and solitude of the outsider and involve psychological and physical violence as well.

Many of the tales in ICE CREAM come from the "wrong" side of some cultural divide or social convention --- geography, language, class, sexual roles --- and three of them are linked by a common protagonist: Ulli, a Finnish woman whose smart, ironic voice reveals a wintry landscape of the soul. "The Icon Room," a brilliant story, relates her encounter with a stranger, both of them with only a lonely Sunday to look forward to: "Drinking cups of coffee until your heart bangs and you feel dizzy when you stand up. Walking home the quiet way and standing still while a lick of spring sunlight needles your skin. Prickling all afternoon as you wait for the sound of the telephone bell, which doesn't ring and doesn't ring, until at last you give up and put on your dressing gown."

I'd like to hear from Ulli again. I grew fond of her; I want to know more about her. I'd like her to have a companion and a whole book to stretch out in --- because, as good as these are, stories always stop too soon.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

helen dunmore has a lovely way of writing, her narrative is sensual, and really draws you in. but, in "your blue-eyed boy" the plot, which builds and layers very well, falls short about three quarters into the book. i felt like she had forgotten what the rest of the book was about. the narrator's actions take a turn for the bizarre, new details are thrown in just to make the end seem plausible... and i was just left with a feeling of "ok, come on, this is just silly." her writing, her eye for detail, specifically in the language of landscape and food is brimming with delicious description... but the plot in this one falls flat at the end.

I've just finished reading this book and found it to be disappointing. The blackmail theme is interesting and well developed. You certainly feel involved in the complicated life of Simone and her family who are struggling to hold it all together during tough times...but where was the plot heading? Not to spoil the ending for other readers but I found it didn't warrant the build-up. Overall, I thought it was an average book and I'm not sure that I would recommend it.

"Your Blue-Eyed Boy" is a novel about time lost. You cannot regain the features of the body you once had, every single cell of your flesh underwent many a transformation, and more to the point, your mind has changed. Irreversibly. The past cannot be brought back, feelings, if they ever return, soon vanish under the thick layer of the present, the overwhelming mindset that had gripped you long ago and refuses to let you loose. Perhaps it's for the best, perhaps it's as it should be, for what would happen if we were able to reverse the flow of time? Would we gain as much as we think we would? The answer is yes, indeed we would come straight back to the world of lost impressions, in spite of our altered bodies. The irony is that such reversal is insane. Our ever rational mind revolts against that very idea, for everything we have now, would be lost. You cannot eat the cake and still have the cake, as they say. There is a price for everything in this world. Are you willing to make that irreversible move?

The life of a thirty-eight years old judge changes when she receives a call, and then a letter, and then a visitor from America, a sequence of intrusions in her steady life consisting mainly of desperate trials to make ends meet. In an instant, she travels back in time to the era when she had been just eighteen years old, a stranger in a strange land of America, where she met her blue-eyed boy. At that point you think that what you're reading is a mere blackmail thriller, but if you do, then you're deeply mistaken. The book has a barebone storyline, yes, and I strongly advise you to persevere and read the novel to its end, should you happen to have a deeply ingrained aversion to thrillers and mysteries as yours truly. Thanks Helen for small favors, the book didn't turn out to be shallow. The novel is a touching, and yet cruel evaluation of the primary truths of life, sad as they are. There are difficult choices to be made, and there is the horror of passing time we have to reconcile ourselves with. There is infinitely much more to this book than it appears from the terse descriptions, or even from what it seems to be about when you read a couple of chapters. Your "Blue-Eyed Boy" is a novel apt to be largely misunderstood, that seems inevitable. I might also add that those of you who like uplifting stories should better stay away from all books of Helen Dunmore. You might not endure the contents in one piece.

...and that applies both to the author's style and to the characters she has created. The two sisters that are the center of this novel ceaselessly engage in manipulating each other -- and neither one of them are very likable, which made it difficult for me to like this book any more than I did. One of them is simply mean-spirited, and the other has the sexual appetite (as well as the sensitivity, morality and intelligence) of a gerbil. The author is a skillful writer, no doubt -- but if I find so little redeeming in her characters, it leaves only the suspense inherent in the story to hold my interest. There was some degree of that here -- but the endless goings-on about food and cooking allowed my interest to slide even further, a little like mentally driving on ice.

I felt the need to force myself to pay attention to the more important details -- the result was a not-too-pleasant reading experience. That's too bad -- when I read the jacket description, I had high hopes for this novel. The only real aspect of 'talking to the dead' that I found within it was the brief introduction, a soliloquy by one sister lying on the grave of the other which takes place after all of the events in the story.

I can recommend Sheri Reynolds incredible novel A GRACIOUS PLENTY, or even Rhiann Ellis' AFTER LIFE as more entertaining and true to this novel's alleged subject matter.

I think that the author is very talented, but the book never clicked for me. I never made a true connection to the characters and the story seemed a little "rushed" (the book IS very small). The sex scenes between Nina and her brother-in-law were a little too frequent and a little over the edge for me, but I realize different readers have different tastes. I LOVED the author's style of writing and it was very visual, but the book is definitely not a "re-read" for me, nor would I recommend it to anyone. I think the author has great potential and the people who really enjoyed this book would probably also love any books by Alice Hoffman (check site for reviews). I like Alice Hoffman's prose as well, but she does a much better job with her storylines. I'll admit that the ending was pretty darned good in that I had to go back and reread the previous page just to make sure I got it right. :) Best wishes to Ms. Dunmore!

I liked this book a lot. I didn't expect everything to be explained, because Nina the narrator doesn't know all the answers (for example, about Edward's role in Isabel's life); I didn't expect to be shocked by plot twists--the whole book moves like a magnet to its climax and conclusion. The interest came for me in the gorgeous writing, and in the author's ability to sustain a terrible tension, a sense of gathering doom, like a summer storm rolling in slowly, but with stunning force. I enjoyed imagining Isabel through the eyes of the various characters; and imagining how Isabel's various mental troubles developed and manifested through life, while she remained (on the surface) a perfectly functional woman. We keep getting new information that changes that imagined course, right up to the end; so maybe it's the unwritten parts of the story that kept me fascinated. I didn't read it very quickly--I spent a couple weeks reading it in short sittings at the gym--maybe that helped me remember it as more attenuated, more impressive in the way its tone is maintained.

Rarely, does one come across a gothic novel written by a modern novelist that is not totally insipid. Helen Dunmore's "A Spell of Winter" is literature and it is beautiful. The writing strikes a fine poetic balance - profoundly evocative without being overly dense or distracting from the story she unwinds. You are, quite simply, there. You smell, taste and feel everything. And, the scenery...ah, the scenes, the odd, strange and staggeringly beautiful scenes you find yourself experiencing (Dunmore is a master of place) - ones you won't forget after you close the book. It is all very confusing and exciting and exquistedly sad. The characters, particularly the female ones, are well-realized and deeply complex (just as people truly are in a life fully-lived). Dunmore has obviously, like many of us, been long haunted by Cathy and Heathcliff. Admittedly, I had a few problems with the novel's conclusion. Toward the end, I found many of the actions of the characters became totally, well, uncharacteristic and seemed manipulated to satisfy to the novel's plot, or lack thereof, toward the ending. I found this highly disappointing since I was so involved with the characters by that point. Much of the novel's trembling intensity seems to just peter out. Still, there did exist that "trembling intensity" and finding that anywhere in a novel is a gift not lightly dismissed.

A Gothic novel that is as dark and atmospheric to the classics it has been compared to. Dunmore's writing it lush and captivating, and this is a total page-turner. Yet, being a devoted fan, I know that she has been better in other works....

"A Spell of Winter" is an old-fashioned novel, where once again the flow of narration charms us in an instant, and we are carried off into the nineteenth century English countryside, and enter the small world where Catherine's life undergoes a transformation. It's a small world, for the story evolves around the house, a family mansion of the Allens, a dysfunctional family we grow to love as pages turn around and about. The novel is a pleasure to read, bu all accounts. beginning with an old-style clear typeface, beautiful dust jacket, well-bound hardcover, and ending with the characters, the frozen setting and dusty mysterious atmosphere of the storyline. Helen Dunmore is virtually unknown in America, perhaps because only recently the audience had the chance to discover her works. I am happy that I found A Spell of Winter sue to seemingly random book search patterns I have. Having read thousands of books, I have developed a sort of intuition which whispers in my ear: that's the one! I have bought Helen Dunmore's novel trusting my intuition, and having just finished it, I would like to make a heartfelt recommendation for fellow old-fashioned bookworms like yours truly. The novel is engaging, never dull, the writing style is unique, impossiblt to compare with anyone else's, the narration is soft, dreamilke, and even very topics which others would have found difficult, if not impossible to write about, were touched here with infinite gentleness, like a womanly barely audible whisper, a story told intimately, reserved for your ears only, in confidence of an embrace, in a small room of an old house lit only by a weak yet cheerful candle. I am sure some of you have lived through this; listened attentively with love when the dearest significant other opens her heart; slowly and gradually unfolding the most important tale of personal life. Have you? "A Spell of Winter" is the confession, such confession, this particular confession that makes you slightly tremble all along, while you are aware of both the intimacy and the importance of the moment. It might have been a diary. Yes, it might have been, but then it wouldn't have been as good as it is. Brilliant dialogues, where there is no word lost, or added beyond what is needed, devoid of ornaments, and yet beautiful in its simplicity. I have fallen in love with the voice of Catherine, the charming protagonist of the novel. Eccentric and feminine, Catherine unveils the mystery of her spectacular girlhood in the family mansion. One might say that whoever else tried to touch that subject, would definitely fail, having trivialized it, trampled over with some superimposed vision, where we would have no choice but to follow the interpretation served us by the author. Dunmore allowed us to follow the events, as they came, with her exquisite prose carrying us like the dolphin over waves, in a twirl, leaving it for us to ponder about. There is not a single artificial moment in the book, and boy, wasn't that easy to commit! Dunmore has class and grace, and I am sure that whatever she chose to write about, she would do that with her unique, delicate strokes of feather, leaving you amused, sighing, longing to enter her fictional world without a second look back. I didn't want the novel to end, nor did I want any of the chapters to end. Each page is like a lyrical poem; a poem written for you and you only. It's a rare feeling, you know?

"A Spell of Winter" is the most beautiful novel I read in many years, and I will not exaggerate if I claim that it's place is among the notable books of the XX century. I will come back to this book many times in future. Rarely indeed I feel like starting to read all over again when I have just only finished. When a novel ends like this one, you just can't help but sigh and take a long walk. Reality is too much to bear. A tale of passion, tradition, youth, wasted lives, redemption, forgiveness, family ties, abandonment, eternal love, and the unbreakable spirit. I discovered Helen Dunmore and I couldn't have been more happy. I have written this review to share my impressions with you, dear reader. "A Spell of Winter" - a small diamond you will want to keep close to your heart, and take with you everywhere, with that 'specific gravity of smile' on your face...