Zennor in Darkness

http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/zennor-in-darkness-helen-dunmore/ ( )

This is an amazing first novel by Helen Dunmore. It was hard to track down a copy but I perservered because I read that the setting is Cornwall during WWI (interesting time period) and that D.H.Lawrence (a favorite) and his wife are secondary characters. Dunmore captures the period and as far as I can remember about Lawrence (it's been awhile) his persona. Dunmore's switches in narrator flow smoothly. She convincingly captures the sense of place and time so that the reader feels the spray of the sea on the craggy inlets and feels the war's effect on all the characters. ( )

It's May 1917 in a small village by the Cornish coast. Cousins Clare and Hannah hear that Hannah's brother John William is coming home for leave before going to officer training. The visit, however, doesn't quite go how they expected. Elsewhere, the village gossips about the writer and his strange German wife living in a tiny cottage.

I enjoyed the book, its language and the characters, but felt it could have benefited from a tighter focus on Clare and her artistic ambitions. ( )

A beautifully written re-imagining ( )