The Winter Ghosts - Kate Mosse

I had a bad time with Kate Mosse’s ‘Labyrinth’. It was dull, repetitive, with a plot that made no sense and. it. was. long. If you’re going to be dull, be dull in a novella, some of us have things to be doing. ‘The Winter Ghosts’ was on my mum’s bookshelves and since it’s very rare that a book will pass through our house without both of us reading it I thought I’d give it a go for the RIP challenge. And it was for once a good decision because ‘The Winter Ghosts’ was an entertaining story full of heart and charm.

The reader first sees the novel’s hero Freddie in Toulousse and from the beginning he is described in a way that provokes curiosity:

‘He walked like a man recently returned to the world. Every step was careful, deliberate. Every step was to be relished.

He was tall and clean shaven, a little thin perhaps. Dressed by Saville Row. A light woollen suit of herringbone weave, the jacket wide on the shoulders and narrow at the waist. His fawn gloves matched his trilby. He looked like an Englishman, secure in his right to be on such a street on such a pleasant afternoon in spring.

But nothing is as it seems.

For every step was a little too careful, a little too deliberate, as if he was unwilling to take even the ground beneath his feet entirely for granted. And as he walked, his clever, quick eyes darted from side to side, as if he were determined to record every tiny detail.’

The description is precise, so that the reader gets a clear picture of Freddie, when the narrator is encouraging the reader to have a false perception of Freddie and after the narrator corrects that perception. It feels easy to visualise Freddie, but also to understand his personality by the way that he acts. At the same time not too much of him is revealed, to keep the first meeting full of suspense. The reader knows Freddie is unsure, possibly nervous, or searching for something, but they don’t know why. Your interest – Kate Mosse has it.

Freddie meets an antique documents dealer in Toulouse. He has a letter that he needs translated, because it is written in an ancient French dialect. The dealer begins to read it and then stops after looking at the content to ask Freddie where he got the letter, which gives Freddie the opportunity to unfold his tale in an uninterrupted, first person monologue. The reason for telling the story to the reader framed in such a simple way and by delaying the reading of the letter, Mosse creates more interest. She provides readers with a pastiche novel that combines some of the devices found in classic Victorian ghost stories like dramatic foreshadowing, holding back information to create suspense and a framing device, with an abundance of shorter, suspenseful sentences that might have felt out of place in a Victorian ghost story. Using shorter sentences adds a recognisably modern element of suspense to a novel set in the past that follows the writing rules set by older storytellers. In turn it makes it easier for readers (like me) with an aversion to the long, descriptive passages of Victorian literature to digest and makes it instantly clear to modern readers what kind of tone the book is going to have.

The novel then flashes back to 1928. After ten years Freddie is still mourning his brother George, who was killed in the First World War. In a time when most families have lost someone, Freddie’s deep, prolonged grief looks unseemly and he can’t stand being encouraged to move on. His nerves are shot, in fact he has spent time resting in a sanatorium and he is also rather physically weak. His doctor has advised Freddie to take a trip to France for the air and so he motors around the country, feeling better for the anonymity and lack of expectation that a foreign country provides him.

Is it surprising that Freddie’s observations about brotherly grief and the social conditions of the early nineteenth century were my favourite parts of ‘The Winter Ghosts’? I can’t help it, I am a social history nerd. Freddie talks about how much he still misses his brother, showing the grief that the First World War brought to siblings. It’s a different way to approach the personal devastation that the war caused, as it’s normal to see wives who lose their husbands and parents who lose their sons in fiction about the First World War, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen much about how siblings felt. By describing his parents reaction to his grief (basically they aren’t even the people who tell him his brother is dead and buck up, is the only option Freddie is left with) Freddie shows how society failed to make proper space for the grieving process, which varies for each person. By stifling his grief they store up trouble for the future and then blame Freddie for his mental collapse years after his brother’s death. His parents and friends feel Freddie should have moved on, but he is never given the opportunity to move on.

There are many interesting details about the post war psychology in this novel. Freddie comments that 'They wanted a son who played rubgy and cricket and went to war, not a sickly indoors boy...' which shows that even after George has died, his parents fail to realise that it is exactly these kind of sons who go off to war and die. They almost find themselves accomplices in George’s death, as they want a son they can be proud of, but their definition of proud puts their son in danger because in order to fulfil his idea of what a good son and man should be (and idea which undoubtedly comes from his parents) George goes off to war. Freddie talks about a man from George’s unit who survived and feels guilty. He equates himself with such a man, even though he wasn’t old enough to follow his brother to war, showing that survivor guilt could apply to all those who survived the First World War, not just those who fought and survived their comrades. There’s an interesting picture of a guilty, sad, repressed society in ‘The Winter Ghosts’ that is reinforced by the cold, dark winter landscape of France that Freddie drives through. The atmosphere doesn’t quite feel like the nature in sympathy of the Victorian school, because the weather doesn’t symbolise Freddie’s mood, or the state of his society (we are in France after all, not England, although it could symbolise the state of France after the war but with an Englishman full of personal grief focusing our attention the French situation after the war is referred to fleetingly). There are no dark clouds, or deadly looking icicles that are described in an ominously prophetic way and come to symbolise actions that Freddie will take. Instead his grief is set against an appropriate background, where weather stokes the background feeling of emptiness and depression. That’s nature in sympathy too, but its perhaps Mosse using the device in a less oppressive way. Have I actually made a distinction here – please let me know.

Freddie’s car crashes in the French Pyrennes and he is forced to stumble down the mountain to a small town, which offers a hotel and little else. The town is having a big celebration, la fete de Sainte-Etienne and Freddie is invited. He decides to go, meets a girl named Fabrissa who wants to hear all about his brother and in exchange tells him the story of the time her village was forced to hide from soldiers in nearby caves. Freddie naturally assumes they had to hide from Germans, but this is where the ghost story kicks in. It’s also where we’re asked to necessarily suspend our disbelief about ghosts and our heroe’s credulity, for example Fabrissa asks about George, but Freddie never notices that he hadn’t yet told her his brother’s name. Soldiers arrive, Freddie and Fabrissa escape through a hidden tunnel, with Freddie half believing the soldiers are part of the celebration. Here Freddie and Fabrissa share a moonlit night, before Freddie wakes up determined to find Fabrissa despite the fact that no one in town knows her, or believes he was at the fete.

Essentially ‘The Winter Ghosts’ is a gothic hymn of love from Freddie to his brother, Freddie to Fabrissa and Freddie to the fascination death holds. Consequently it feels lighter in tone than other ghost stories. The grissly find that Freddie makes at the end feels less alarming, although Freddie’s reaction to it is still disturbing enough to raise arm hair. Possibly this is because of the remove of time that is lent to the bleak discovery he makes (I rather think this is a point Mosse is trying to make, that history can deaden us to the grief of tragedy), or maybe it is because this book is less a ghost story of horror and more a gothic, or paranormal romance focused on how closure can be provided for people who lose those they love. It’s final message is of release and happiness, rather than a continuation of horror. The ghosts are benevolent, even before they are set free from their tomb, which is something I’m not used to seeing in ghost stories. It was an idea I liked and without the slowly ratcheted claustrophobia of a typical ghost story there was more room for an exploration of the time, a detailed look at Freddie’s feelings and a description of the village.

Small problems were:

The insistence of making Freddie an authentic historical character by having him decry the modern, usually the modern woman. He states that the 'Jazz and girls with bobbed hair and those, chic false new buildings in Piccadily', were not worth the sacrafice, equating modern women with falsity. He prefers a girl natural 'unspoiled by powder and rouge' (I hate this kind of comment) and these little snippets seemed completely unnecessary to me. There are other ways to make a character sound realistically historical without having him think small misogynistic tidbits.

At times I felt like Mosse was trying to encourage the reader to view Freddie as an unreliable narrator because of his nerves and time in a sanatorium, so she could produce a reaction of surprise when the ghosts are revealed to be real. I went ahead, ignoring all her hints about Freddie’s state of mind and missed that possibility. In my opinion it was a weak possibility that wasn’t fully developed and should have been left out, because it immediately made me compare the book to ‘The Little Stranger’. While ‘The Winter Ghosts’ may be interesting and entertaining it really doesn’t compare to Sarah Water’s novel.

I noticed in ‘Labyrinth’ that Mosse has a thing about repeatedly using words. In ‘Winter Ghosts’ she reveals her love for the word precipitously. She doesn’t reuse this word as often as she reused words and descriptions in ‘Labyrinth’ but it’s still rather noticeable and a little annoying.
Otherwise an entertaining, quick read (I read it in a day). ‘Winter Ghosts’ feels emotionally realistic and makes history feel present and easy to slip into. Great atmospheric tone. Just a few minor niggle along the way. It would have been really sad to dislike all the books written by the founder of the Orange prize. Now let’s see how I do with ‘Sepulchre’.