She opened her eyes and looked at his face close up, seeing and loving with a great rush of tenderness the tired lines beneath the eyes, and the delicate, high-bridged nose, and the mouth, the mouth she had been kissing with such abandon; and she had never noticed before that the teeth were just slightly protruding, like a rabbits, and in her mind she said- My bunny, oh, my darling bunny, and then she half laughed as he touched his nose gently against hers and kissed her again. pushing back passion with playfulness.

Madeleine L’Engle’s novel, A Winter’s Love was first published in 1957, this must be noted because to the modern reader the ‘forbidden’ situations within’ are common place today. Lovers living together in sin, older and unmarried- these things were shocking at one time. Affairs are the stuff of soap operas and talk shows, but there was still a naivete in full grown women, such as we encounter with Emily Bowen. With her marriage as frigid as her surroundings, her husband Courtney (Court) reeling from the loss of his teaching job as a professor and focused on writing a novel on a ‘forced’ sabbatical in Switzerland, the family is drifting. Rather than turning to his wife, admitting his failings, he chooses instead to lick his wounds in privacy and erect a wall keeping his children and wife out. Being the ‘good little woman’ she’s been raised to be, Emily tries to go accept this farce as normal but deep down she is resentful. How better things would be if he would just let her in, after-all, for any marriage to work both partners must embrace the good. the bad and the ugly between them.

Still beautiful and vibrant, she is a woman of passions and finds a soft place to fall in the arms of Abe, someone whose meant something to her in the past, but this thing between is growing stronger, harder to hide when her eldest daughter is visiting with her friend in tow. It isn’t long before Emily is seeing herself as wanton, realizing she isn’t much different from women like Gertrude when it comes to her needs and desires. Women she once judged as shameful, those whom flaunt convention. What happens when she too must make a choice? How can she take what her heart wants when it would cost her family, and worse likely devastate her broken, deeply unhappy husband?

The reader is privy to her inner turmoil and is present as she carries on an ‘illicit’ affair under the watchful eyes of others. Regardless of the times, there will always be a hunger for human beings to connect emotionally. The moment one spouse turns away from another, severing intimacy becomes like a poison in any marriage. Emily has been a staunch defender of her husband, despite his failures but she is lonely, angry, conflicted. While Abe is able to give her more than her husband can, currently swallowed by his depression, is it real? Can she truly cut her husband out, like some cancer, rather than hoping he will once again come alive to her, be present in their marriage? How much of our happiness must we sacrifice, is it any more selfish to want to be loved than it is to for our partner to denies us basic emotional needs?

One thing is certain, people don’t like to think about infidelity too much. It casts far too many shadows on our own relationships. No one wants to be the one betrayed, and yet it’s hard not to understand the loneliness of being in a marriage when your spouse has absented themselves. It’s always said women are ‘feeling creatures’ but truly, we all are. Everyone needs communion with another, or else- why marry at all? Why be in any sort of relationship? Outsiders will always gossip and judge what they will, because it’s easier than examining your own marriage. Emily is loyal, but she is falling in love with another man, deeply. He is giving her everything Court is denying her but is that enough reason to leap into the unknown? To divorce even?

While this is slow at times, considering it’s original publication date it’s much easier to immerse oneself into the heaviness of the subject. Shame, betrayal, choices, mistakes and all the what ifs… is the glory in remaining loyal and denying yourself happiness? Is there more glory in taking what the heart wants, even if it costs others dearly, maybe your own children? Just what will Emily do?

Publication Date: May 2, 2017

Open Road Integrated Media

A WINTER'S LOVE BY MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Have you ever been in love with two people at the same time? This gorgeously written novel features a woman named Emily Bowen whose marriage to Courtney hits a rough patch. Emily loves her husband but he has just been replaced in his teaching position and he shuts down emotionally and physically. You get the feeling that this job loss makes Courtney feel less of a man. The story seems to take place in a period of a week before Christmas in the Swiss Alp's. Courtney has taken his wife Emily and his two daughter's on sabbatical to stay in this small picturesque village in Switzerland where he is concentrating on writing but is getting very little done.

Courtney is brusque in his interactions with his wife Emily who tries to do everything she can to melt her frozen husband and get him to open up to her. The marriage is clearly failing and Courtney is always shut out in his study or reading a book. Abe K. Fielding is a mutual friend that this couple has known for years back when they all lived in New York. Abe is staying in the little village of the only hotel with his son Sam in Switzerland also. Sam is a friend to Emily's and Courtney's daughter Virginia and a budding romance with Virginia's friend Mimi is starting to get off the ground. Mimi is staying with the Bowen's home from boarding school but is from Paris.

Before to long a strong friendship develops between Emily and Abe. At first they are getting reacquainted through Gertrude who is a holocaust survivor who worked helping during the French Resistance during World War II. Abe is almost always at Gertrude's chalet when Emily and Courtney get invited to go out for drinks at the hotel or just spend time listening to phonographs at Gertrude's home. Courtney who is usually in one of his moods encourages Emily to go without him. Emily is a good friend of Gertrude's and always seems to be joining up with the group by herself.

Abe is the opposite of Courtney with the way he treats Emily. He treats her with kindness and respect and soon the two of them are developing a close romantic relationship. They have dinner together at Abe's hotel. Emily is invited up to Abe's hotel room alone. Abe walks Emily home after her invitations out. A passionate romance is what they find themselves involved in although nothing beyond kissing has happened yet.

You can feel the frozen wind and temperatures and see the beautiful colors of the Swiss Alps in the background with the beautiful descriptive prose. It has a 1950's feel to the time period. Emily is very conflicted because although she has grown to love Abe she is still in love with Courtney. He is the father of their two children. She wants to be with Abe, but she doesn't want to hurt her husband. Therein lies the conflict that Emily has gotten herself into. There is conflict with all of the flawed characters that I have mentioned including the teenagers. Who does Emily choose her husband Courtney or Abe?

I have not read the much acclaimed novel "A Wrinkle in Time," so I can not comment on that other than I know it has won many awards and has also been a banned book in the United States. It is worthy of mention that President George Bush awarded L'Engle a National Humanities Medal in 2004. Madeleine L'Engle was an award-winning author of more than sixty books. A comprehensive body of work that includes both children's and adult fiction, poetry, plays, memoirs and books on prayer. Her best known work is the classic children's novel "A Wrinkle in Time," won the Newbery Medal for distinguished children's literature and has sold fourteen million copies worldwide. L'Engle was born on November 29, 1918 in New York City. She died on September 6, 2007 at the age of eighty-eight. I wasn't expecting to love this novel as much as I did. I loved everything about it, from it's 1950's feel of a time of innocence. I loved the flawed, conflicted characters. I loved the lovely setting of the frozen Swiss Alps and the little quaint village this novel takes place in. I am looking forward to reading more from this author. Highly Recommended Five Plus Big Stars.

Thank you to Net Galley, Madeleine L'Engle and Open Road Media Publishing for the pleasure of reading and reviewing this timeless novel. I was provided a digital copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I read this book with conflicted feelings: on the one hand, I was impressed by what a talented and insightful writer L'Engle was even so early in her career, and on the other, compared with her later works, it's clear here that L'Engle hadn't quite hit her stride. What for another writer would be a magnum opus, is for L'Engle a mere test of the pen. Almost all the things that would make "A Wrinkle in Time" and later works so outstanding are present here, but still only in semi-developed form.

It's the 1950s (the book was released in 1957) and the Bowen family is overwintering in the French Alps. It should have been a fun holiday while Courtney, the husband, is on sabbatical, but instead he has lost his teaching job and is trying to get some writing done while wrestling with the decision of whether or not to accept the one job offer he has received, and move the whole family from New York City to small-town Indiana. Meanwhile, Emily, the main viewpoint character, who is Courtney's wife and more than ten years his junior, is wrestling with her own attraction to an old family friend, who is also overwintering with his teenage son in the same town. Everyone is trying to watch out for Gertrude, an American woman and a hero of the resistance, whose health was ruined in the camps.

The setting is marvelously realized, and feels both real and charmingly vintage. The characters bathe in a hip-bath in the kitchen, use hot water bottles instead of central heating, and only have one phone, which hangs from the wall. This may have been particularly striking to me because I originally thought this was a more recent release and I was struggling to place the period details, but in any case the book feels very naturally and authentically 50s, which is either a plus or a minus, depending on your point of view. WWII is still very much on everyone's minds, with Gertrude and her camp tattoo, Madame Peridot's history of collaborating with the occupiers, and the disagreement explodes between the young people over the discovery that one of them is technically Jewish. That particular facet of the story feels peculiarly quaint, and yet...not. The racism and prejudice the characters are trying to confront are still very much in evidence today, sixty years later.

The relationships within and between the characters are where L'Engle's magic is most clearly evident. Everyone is conflicted, everyone is questing, everyone is well-intentioned and striving to understand the universe and their place in it. This could be tedious or preachy, but L'Engle makes everyone sympathetic and well-rounded, especially in the interactions between mothers and daughters. Although Emily and her daughter Virginia are not just early prototypes for Meg Murry of "A Wrinkle in Time" and her relationships with her own mother and then later with her daughter Poly, the richness and delicacy is already there, as is the emphasis on women as having thoughts, feelings, and stories of their own. I have to admit that I didn't like Emily and Virginia *as much* as I did the protagonists of the later, YA books, and the plot lacks some of the same urgency, not to mention the presence of magic, but "A Winter's Love" is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in L'Engle's work, or anyone who just wants to curl up with something warm and read about a chilly winter and an impossible love in the Alps.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

How can you explain being instantly drawn into a book where nothing happens? That is what happened to me during the first chapter of A Winter's Love. Emily Bowen is spending time in a foreign country with her husband and children during the Christmas holidays. Her husband lost his teaching post over office politics. In a house full of people, Emily is alone. Her husband locks himself in his study and in his thoughts. Torn between loving him, hating him and being ignored it is hard when a friend from the States is vacationing at the casino near her hotel. He sees her. He hears her. And she struggles to do the right thing by her husband. Gripping, atmospheric, and one of the things we require in a great book - universal truths and emotions that touch all people of all backgrounds. An absolutely fabulous read.

Although an early work by L'Engle, the writing is still beautiful. Some of the characters in this story show up in some of her later works. This is a story of love and conflict and morality. Emily has a tough choice to make and much time is spent examining her feelings. The story flowed well and the characters were interesting. This story is being republished as I understand it was out of print and difficult to find. I wanted to read it because I loved L'Engle's [book:A Wrinkle in Time|18131].

Thanks to Open Road Integrated Media through NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this quiet and persuasive tale of domestic life, first published in 1957 but with themes and conflicts that are timeless. Courtney Bowen has lost his job in academia and takes his wife and two daughters to spend a year in the French Alps where he hopes to be able to concentrate on his writing. But his failure to do so causes him to withdraw from family life and the strains this puts on his marriage causes his wife Emily to doubt her relationship with him and find herself increasingly drawn to an old friend Abe Fielding. Nothing very original in such a scenario but it is deftly and convincingly handled. Not exactly Anna Karenina but a love story on a small scale – which after all is the most any of us experience in real life. It’s an insightful exploration of marriage, desire, fidelity and temptation, a convincing portrait of motherhood and the divided loyalties of a good woman sorely tempted by an alternative life. It all takes place not long after WWII and there are still echoes, with one of the characters having been in the Resistance and a concentration camp, and another having hosted German officers. But essentially it’s a love story, a story of a marriage and domesticity and a gentle and compelling read.

A Winter's Love is a very powerful novel and very thought-provoking. The characters were very likable and well-developed. The setting was evocative. Though the ending was sad, I liked it and thought it was realistic.