Product Description

This is another strong, satisfying novel, full of rich storytelling, by the author of the favourite "The Tea Rose". Set in London and Africa in the early days of the twentieth century, "The Winter Rose" introduces some remarkable new characters. India Selwyn-Jones is one of the rare new breed: a lady doctor. Her family, her eligible, ambitious fiance, the male medical establishment all object but she insists on defying convention and finds a post in London's East End. There she meets a gangland boss called Sid Malone. Criminal he may be but he also has a hidden charm, and a devastatingly attractive personality, and when India is called to treat him after a dockside brawl, their friendship becomes more intense. But Sid Malone is not his real name: and he has a past and enemies by the score, including India's determined and ruthless fiance whose intention is to marry into the family money as well as becoming a leading political figure. The stormy, noisy, brawling docklands are a natural home to the political fight as the fledgling Labour Party gets underway, and the struggle for the women's vote becomes more strident. But the East End is also a place for those who have a past to hide, a new beginning to find. And so the complicated strands of betrayal and pretence, of ambition and family, are woven again into a new drama, in a new country. Jennifer Donnelly, author of "A Gathering Light" as well as "The Tea Rose", has a wonderful gift for sweeping storytelling, with a lively cast of vivid characters, rich and detailed backgrounds. Her writing has a warmth and energy that takes all readers completely into her world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17370 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

Review
Praise for 'The Winter Rose': 'There's a hint of mystery, lots of interesting characters and locales such as India, Africa and California, with turn-of-the-century London at the centre of an engaging book. Recommended.' Barbara Taylor Bradford Praise for the 'The Tea Rose': 'This is a most seductive novel. You'll be charmed by the novels heroine -- her intelligence, her courage, her great heart. Despite her suffering -- a lost love, a tragic family -- there are moments you will want to cheer. It's the kind of novel where the writing is so fluid you feel the author simply loves telling her story. This is a splendid, heartwarming novel of pain, struggle, decency, triumph -- and just what we need in these times.' Frank McCourt 'I loved this vividly researched and wonderfully rumbustious yarn -- brilliantly told, great fun to read.' Simon Winchester 'Bold, brisk and beguiling, 'The Tea Rose' is a splendid brew of a book.' Sam Twining

Where's Jack the Ripper when you need him?India Jones - her name an echo, intentional or not, of the Harrison Ford film character - is spirited, moneyed, smart, high-toned, tough and diligent. She lacks only the ability to "smell a copper a mile away," a skill that would help her fit right in with her patients in Whitechapel, London's dingiest, grimiest, Cockneyest district, where she has set up a medical practice. Jack London wrote about the place in People of the Abyss, a book contemporaneous with the time at which Donnelly's far chunkier tome takes place. Like Donnelly's The Tea Rose (2002), this work features a heroine who cuts a fine figure in the world but who is less than complete without a man - preferably a dangerous sort, it seems, rather than a fellow do-gooder - by her side. India fills the bill with Sid Malone, a cruel-hearted and cruelly handsome gangster who is definitely not for the faint of heart. (Come the movie, Ian McShane is just the type for the part.) Both naturally resist the temptations of the other. Eventually, hormones trump sense; as Donnelly explains, "He stood, as if to go, then instead he bent to her, took her face in his hands, parted her lips with his tongue, and kissed her deeply." Once parted, those lips stay parted, even when Sid gets himself in trouble with the coppers. When he's released on his own recognizance, Sid arms himself with a pseudonym and goes off in search of India, who has transferred herself to Kenya to do good in coffee country. Seems she's got something that's his. Meanwhile, she's looking for something that's hers, too, but is stymied by the evil politician Freddie Lytton, who, come to think of it, has his Jack the Ripper qualities. Can love prevail over money? Can love outlast this too-long, too-average narrative? Only India's shadow knows.Horatio Alger meets a bodice-ripper meets Hemingway, with Dickensian dashes for good measure. Still, mostly a bodice-ripper, and a middling one at that. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Jennifer Donnelly is a children's book writer, tea enthusiast and amateur rosarian. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband. 'The Tea Rose' was her first novel.

Customer Reviews

Operatic and overblown
Ok, this was never going to be great literature, but I was hoping for a long and emotionally-satisfying read after all the great reviews here: but I was disappointed. This starts out well, with interesting characters and a flowing style. However about half way through I felt that Donnelly had just lost interest and what had been a good cross between the family saga and girl-makes-good-against-the-odds genres, started deteriorating into far more of the worst kind of bodice ripper (quite literally on a couple of occasions).

The anti-hero, who was interesting precisely because of his moral ambiguity, turns into something far more cliched and therefore dull; and the villain was so pantomime that he was pretty laughable from the start. An obvious disciple of the 'imagine the worst thing that can happen to your characters' school of writing, there were just too many twists of bad fortune, too many misunderstandings, too many just-missed opportunities that I moved from rooting for the lovers to actually wanting them to have an unhappy ending as I was just so irritated.

Clearly I'm in the minority here as other reviewers have loved this book: I didn't hate it but I suspect it might have been better at half the length while the author's passion and interest were still engaged.

One of the best books ever!
I can say with absolute honesty that this is one of the most amazing books that i have ever read. A self-confessed bookworm, i read everything and anything but what i love is a book that grips my attention and imagination. A book impossible to put down, with a fast-moving storyline and believable and lovable characters. This book has it all - the plot kept me totally absorbed and each and every character was wonderfully portrayed - i fell in love with India, Sid, Fiona and Joe and am hoping that the third of this triology will develop the story of Willa and Seamie, the lovers so tragically apart. This was the first of the trilogy purchased but I have since bought 'The Tea Rose' and am now devouring it. I cannot recommend this highly enough. I cannot wait to read this again!!

A long and tedious winter
This is poor quality writing from cover to cover. Every event is signalled well ahead (for instance the photograph of the Californian coast, which is inevitably where they will end up), hackneyed melodrama (the jackal ripping the villain's heart out made me laugh out loud it's so awful) or over obviously researched by an author desperate to appear knowledgeable. The chunks of @research@ on the history of medicine and London appear just like that - wodges of dumped detail.

Over romanticized characters, especially the women, and a plot that goes from bad to farce. A pity, because a good book about the medical world in the East End of London before the First World War would have been valuable and interesting.