A Girl in Winter

Front Cover
Abrams, Nov 15, 1985 - Fiction - 249 pages

This classic novel captures twelve transformative hours in the life of an exiled woman living in England and working at a library during World War II.

Philip Larkin’s second novel was first published in 1947. This story of Katherine Lind and Robin Fennel, of winter and summer, of war and peace, of exile and holidays, is memorable for its compassionate precision and for the uncommon and unmistakable distinction of its writing.

Praise for A Girl in Winter

“A highly sensitive, rather meditative and slowly moving novel, a work of deliberately modest proportions reminiscent of Virginia Woolf and the early Elizabeth Bowen. . . . Larkin has the ability to evoke, in a few bleak images, a sense of waste and disillusion and emptiness that is as profound as the similarly barren vision of Beckett.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New Republic

A Girl in Winter is a beautifully constructed, funny and profoundly sad book.” —Andrew Motion

 

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1985)

Philip Larkin was born in Coventry in 1922 and was educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry, and St John's College, Oxford. As well as his volumes of poems, which include The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, he wrote two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, and two books of collected journalism: All What Jazz: A Record Diary, and Required Writing: Miscellaneous Prose. He worked as a librarian at the University of Hull from 1955 until his death in 1985. He was the best-loved poet of his generation, and the recipient of innumerable honours, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and the WHSmith Award.

Bibliographic information