Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #365999 in Books
• Published on: 1975-03-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Review
From England (where it was published in 1957 and is now scheduled for republication) this low keyed, and sometimes deliberately indistinct novel spends a day with Katherine Lind who comes to an unidentified city in this country from somewhere in Europe, during the war. The months she has spent alone in a drab room and in a friendless job in a public library have been brightened by the memory of Robin Fennel, whom she had visited on a holiday when in England six years before. This earlier experience occasions the extensive central inset of the novel which begins with her hopes of seeing Robin again. It ends when Robin appears suddenly, deceptively jaunty in his uniform, for his diffident charm has given way to restlessness, petulance, a certain pathos... Mr. Larkin is a poet and there are niceties of perception and phrase to grace his novel which is no more- really- than a brief encounter. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Wintry charm
The review below is actually for "Jill".

"A Girl In Winter" is Larkin's second and final novel, written whilst he was lonely in Wellington, Shropshire, working as a librarian. THis may account for the somewhat disconsolate feel of the novel; it is beautifully written but somewhat cold, as suggested by the title.

In the book, Katherine is working as a provincial librarian. She takes a colleague to the dentist and discovers a letter when she returns home saying that a man from her past will be visiting. The novel then flashes back, explaining how they met through a penfriend scheme at school, and how she was invited to stay one summer. We follow her visit with the Fennels during the summer, and then return to the present, where Katherine meets the young man, Robin, in rather dispiriting circumstances.

I found this book an exceptional read. Larkin's prose is exceptionally good, considering he write this when 21-22, and is highly sympbolic without being obtrusive. It aspires to being allegorical without losing sight of the plot or the characters, as perhaps Joyce's "Ulysses" does. Most of the plot concerns Katherine's various degree of self-deception, as she seeks to understand Robin, his sister Jane and the Fennel family as a whole. In the final section, Katherine's deceptions come to an end and she becomes, as Larkin was to later say, one of the less received. But this entails a painful recognition of the limitations of the self, and of the ability of others to please you.

I much prefer this novel to "Jill" because it has far richer, subtler prose and is less plainly semi-autobiographical. Larkin describes places with, as you'd exepct, great skill and vividness. "A Girl In Winter" is a real gem, an often-overlooked treasure of a novel.

Adds intrigue to the Larkin enigma.
The first thing to say about this novel is the perfected beauty of its descriptions. Larkin himself viewed the novels as long poems of a sort, and these chapters of elegant prose back up that claim. Moreover, with so small an output, the book represents something of a booty to people searching for more of Larkin's effortless writing. Several chapters, made up of a page or so of scene-setting, evoke mediations like 'A slight relax of air' and others. Likewise during the more lengthy chapters there are always a store of lengthy descriptions that evoke place with an assured balance between objective and subjective perception. Remembering that Larkin was still in his early twenties at the time of writing, the stately opening of the novel, detailing a winter landscape, points beyond 'The North Ship' towards his mature poetry.

For this reason, anyone who likes Larkin's poetry - and particularly his lyrical poems such as 'Here' and 'The Trees' - will find plenty to like in here.

However, from a plot point of view lovers of fiction will frown on some of Larkin's mistakes. Even as a Larkin 'fan', there are plenty of errors in the novel that easily explain why the prose hasn't been afforded the same critical attention as the poetry. Despite the frequent brilliance of the writing (the tentative symbolism at the end of the novel is a fine example), there are enough flaws both in character construction and plot to weary or put off an experienced reader. For instance, the division of the plot into three parts rather crudely commands the material: certain episodes, such as Katherine's taking Miss Green to the dentist, take far too long. We also have the introduction of a main character, Anstey, who is presented as a crucial character and then unexpectedly recedes, appearing again only in hearsay. As lyrical poet (this was early Larkin, of course), you sense that Larkin is more concerned with evoking place than his actual characters, and although Katherine Lind is a neatly drawn and interesting centre, all the others are average at best, clichéd and two-dimensional at the worst.

So buy this novel if you like Larkin's poetry, but if you are a reader primarily of fiction, this may frustrate you - a lot. Larkin clearly had a talent for writing in general, but the attention to character at times unconvincing and superficial.