Zennor in Darkness: From the Women’s Prize-Winning Author of A Spell of Winter

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Francis is a bitter man whose life has steadily declined since the death of Clare’s mother. He feels himself above the coarseness of the locals, his perceived position in local society higher than the fisherman and farmers and drapers. But it also confers an isolation. But then her life is shattered by the news that John Williams is dead. Not in the trenches, but in the officer training camp where all imagined he would be safe. As a man more worldly than others in the village, Francis takes it upon himself to seek out the truth of John William’s death. In 1915, D.H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, moved to the Cornish coast and spent two years living in a cottage in Zennor. (You can read a little bit more about that here and see pictures of the cottage where they stayed here.)

The British poet, novelist and children’s writer, Helen Dunmore died of cancer at the age of 64 on 5th June 2017. Sad to say, I have only now come to her work with this, her very first novel, published in 1993. Her most recent prize shortlisting, in 2006, was for the Nestlé Smarties book prize for children's fiction, with The Tide Knot, the second volume in a quartet of children's novels set, like Zennor, on the glittering, mysterious Cornish coast. The move into adult fiction in no way derailed her desire to write for children; in fact, she says, "It's something that's actually become more important in the last half-dozen years. Children are a completely different audience, and I enjoy that. There's something about the way they devour books that's wonderful; you don't get many fans of adult fiction sending you beautiful drawings of your characters. And it frees you to layer on the suspense and narrative drama – to create lots of worlds, real and unreal, and move into them. But at the same time, it's just the same as adult fiction in terms of the emotions. It's not milk and water." Overall, I found it very generic. Aside from the design of the details, the story could take place anywhere and anytime. Also, I suspect that Ms Dunmore is one of those writers who cater mainly to a conservative female audience. My mother would probably very much enjoy this kind of writing.

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At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.

I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland. The amazingly detailed evocation of 1917 St. Ives/Zennor - was Helen Dunmore there? I'd love to know how much came from research and how much from educated imagining When Lawrence arrives in Cornwall, it is almost directly after the publication and scandal of his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. In Zennor, he is 'growing vegetables to eke out his tiny income. He earns his living by his writing, and it has shrunk close to nothing since his novel was seized by the police in November 1915 and prosecuted for obscenity. The book is shameful, say reviewers and prosecution. It is a thing which creeps and crawls... He does not know when he will be able to publish another novel. But with a remote cottage rented at five pounds a year, and cheap rural living, he hopes that he and his wife may get through the war.' Controversy follows the Lawrences wherever they go, however; local residents are highly suspicious of Frieda's German accent, and the couples' penchant for singing Hibernian lullabies to one another. 'This brazen couple,' writes Dunmore, 'ignores the crossed, tight webs, the drystone walls, the small signals of kinship, the spider-fine apprehensions of those who've lived there for ever once they feel a fly strumming somewhere on their web.'I am a long-time fan of Dunmore and have read several of her novels including The Greatcoat, A Spell of Winter, Talking to the Dead, Your Blue-Eyed Boy , and With Your Crooked Heart and one collection of short stories, Ice Cream. All her work has something in common: the writing is beautiful. Dunmore began her career as a poet and it shows, but not at the expense of plot. Her work is not a case of style over substance. Only Lawrence can see the true depth of the damage in John-William. Clare is too overwhelmed by her desire for him to notice anything untoward. They escape from the clamour of family and friends to make love on the moon-lit beach, but all too soon he must return to the war effort, to officer training. Clare believes this to be a miraculous escape: he will be out of the trenches for three months.

Asked about the appearance of D. H. Lawrence in the novel, Dunmore explained "Their story needed to be told. We know the bare bones of what happened – but what was it like for him and Frieda in this landscape? The details intrigued me: Lawrence creating a garden, growing things like salsify, getting in tons of manure. He knew how to do practical things – the ironing, the washing – and his combination of day-to-day good sense and the life of the mind fascinated me. I felt there were some interesting things about that particular period and about what turned him against England." [2] Reception [ edit ] Helen Dunmore's 1993 novel Zennor in Darkness is set in and around the village in 1917 when D. H. Lawrence lived nearby. Zennor is also mentioned in the Ulysses Moore series of books, written by Pierdomenico Baccalario; in fact, near Zennor and St Ives there would be the mysterious hamlet of Kilmore Cove, the place where the series is mainly set. Like with her other works of fiction, Zennor in Darkness has a thread of the gothic and the forbidden running though it and this book is particularly melancholy because of the setting. Modern readers will have had no experience with the horrors of WW1 and what it did to communities and individuals, and although this book doesn’t take place in the trenches the book captures so much of that horrible period in history.Will Fowler (2012). Allies at Dieppe: 4 Commando and the US Rangers: Operation Cauldron. Osprey Publishing. pp.Appendix 2. ISBN 978-1-78096-596-3.

urn:lcp:zennorindarkness00hele:epub:947c0528-4941-4d97-a379-aa64a9af469e Foldoutcount 0 Identifier zennorindarkness00hele Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t75t7s02p Invoice 1213 Isbn 0140173560 Clare’s relationship with Francis is splintering. He is unable to engage with her, even though she seeks his paternal love. Now, in her pregnancy, she turns from him towards her local relations. This leads in turn to their expulsion from Zennor by the authorities. Only Clare among the locals is sad to see them go. She is determined to follow the Lawrences out of Zennor, using her art as a means to escape. For CLARE COYNE - beautiful, sensual and creative - it is a time of conflicting emotions. Barely in her 20s, she is a local, but she is also different. Her dead mother conferred on her her Cornishness, but her father, FRANCIS COYNE, has also given her certain airs and graces. She wants to be an artist. Dunmore's depictions of people, too, are vivid and memorable. When Clare meets Lawrence for the first time, for instance, she finds that 'his beard is astonishing. It juts from his face, wiry and bright red, and then the sunlight catches it and it's all the colours she'd never have thought human hair could be: threads of orange and purple like slim flames lapping at coals.'

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Yet the dark tide of gossip and innuendo means that Zennor is neither a place of recovery nor of escape . . . Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children’s author and poet who will be remembered for the depth and breadth of her fiction. Rich and intricate, yet narrated with a deceptive simplicity that made all of her work accessible and heartfelt, her writing stood out for the fluidity and lyricism of her prose, and her extraordinary ability to capture the presence of the past. Did it take chutzpah, to put words in the mouth of one of her literary heroes? Not really, she says: their story needed to be told. "We know the bare bones of what happened – but what was it like for him and Frieda in this landscape? The details intrigued me: Lawrence creating a garden, growing things like salsify, getting in tons of manure. He knew how to do practical things – the ironing, the washing – and his combination of day-to-day good sense and the life of the mind fascinated me. I felt there were some interesting things about that particular period and about what turned him against England." a b Martin, Greg (21 October 2018). "Inside the abandoned Cornwall house full of dark secrets". CornwallLive. Local World . Retrieved 19 January 2021.