Product Description

Lewis is haunted by the memory of his brother, by a stolen car and a river running full, and most of all by the boy at the wheel.

Anna is haunted too, but her ghost is very much alive. Rita, Anna’s mother, is the exact opposite of her daughter – loud, carefree, and a daredevil, at seventy-six. When Rita suffers a fall, Anna must leave London and spend the winter looking after her mother in Yarmouth.

As they search for solutions to their problems, Anna and Lewis find themselves having to face troubling truths about who they are and what they might become – with electrifying consequences.

‘Subtle and forceful . . . [A] finely judged and emotionally intricate novel’ Guardian

‘Artful . . . Beguiling . . . A novel marked by poetic delicacy . . . Azzopardi has a gift for characterization – a magpie-eye for the human spark – and equally for the humanity of things’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Limpid prose . . . [A] lyrical sense of place . . .Startling and arresting . . .Unlikely urban sites take on a fierce and mysterious beauty in Azzopardi’s hands’ Irish Times

‘Here’s proof, if anyone needs it, that the best writing does not need to be inaccessible . . . [Winterton Blue] has the . . . strange, captivating quality of real life shot through with poetry . . . Beautifully evoked’ The Times

‘Intricate, quietly brilliant . . . Some haunting snapshots of contemporary Britain . . . A vivid, sensuous rendition of the Norfolk coast’ Daily Telegraph

‘Funny, bizarre and addictive’ Eve

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #418006 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Sunday Times Culture
'Azzopardi absorbs the reader into each character's mental world, portraying anger and loss with raw realism'

The Observer
'The tangled sorrows at play resist neat conclusions, yet somehow Azzopardi manages to end with a sense of resolution...'

The Guardian
`Haunting evocations of nature ... transform it from a mediocre work into a beautiful one.'

Customer Reviews

Great book and love story
I picked this up at a Station and could not put it down. It's not even the sort of book I normally read, but the story is superb and I already knew of Winterton from family holidays. The author makes the coastal life out there very real, and the relationships between her characters is compelling. Top marks for a brilliant read. I am going back to her other works next.

An average read
The strengths of this book are in the evocative descriptions of the Welsh coast in Winter and the depth of the characters, but the plot itself was a bit slow and rather predictable.

Anna is in her 30's and unmarried. Her widowed mother lives in Wales where she runs a guest house with the larger than life actor, Vernon Savoy.
Lewis, an only surviving twin, following an accident in their teens, finds himself in the guest house while Anna is visiting and there is an immediate connection. Lewis, however, has unfinished business relating to his brother's death and he carries huge insecurities as a result.

I loved Azzopardi's first novel The Hiding Place, but I did not find this, her third book, while enjoyable, up to the same standard.