The Dead of Winter by
Lisa Appignanesi
hbk out January 99
Published by Bantam
at £9.99
M. Rousseau, notaire and pillar of the community of Ste. Anne awakes on Christmas morning, determined to make a confession to his estranged wife. He makes the short journey between his house and her grandmother's filled with determination, fuelled with optimism: he will come clean, admit some shameful secret to her and Madeleine, actress, beauty, film star, and his own private obsession, will understand. Will even forgive him.
But Madeleine is dead, hanged, and her grandmother is convinced it's murder. Madeleine was being stalked in the last days of her life, but Rousseau had dismissed her fears. Does that make him culpable? Indeed, is Rousseau nursing a deeper secret that could increase his guilt?
There are some wonderful descriptions - of the Canadian winter, of emotional turmoil, the petty prurience of the locals - and the portrayal of the young Madeleine's metamorphosis from Mme Tremblay's grandchild, to Titania during a family entertainment is wonderfully drawn. But I have to admit to an ambivalence towards The Dead of Winter. The story cries out for a sympathetic central character, but Pierre Rousseau is too darkly obsessive and Detective Contini rather too hard-edged, too gleefully manipulative for the reader to warm to him. I found myself wanting to hurry things along, skimming some passages and skipping others entirely, impatient for the story to get a move on. There is plenty of incident, there are shocking twists, lust, obsession, jealousy, violence, but the style of the narrative militates against the pace (even though most of it is written in the present tense) and simile is somewhat over-used.
The Dead of Winter is an intriguing story, but it lacks urgency; its narrative has a relentless quality, but without sufficient tension to sustain it.
(
Margaret Murphy
- author of Desire of the Moth & mistress of the psychological suspence novel)
The Dead of Winter by
Lisa Appignanesi