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Winter Love
As a college student in London during the bitterly cold winter of 1944, Red falls in love with her married classmate Mara. Their affair unleashes a physical passion, a jealousy, and a sense of self-doubt that sweep all her previous experiences aside and will leave her changed forever. Set against the rubble of the bombed city, in a time of gray austerity and deprivation, Winter Love recalls a life at its most vivid.
134 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
About the author
Han Suyin
89 books115 followersHan Suyin (Pinyin: Hán Sùyīn) is the pen name of Elizabeth Comber, born Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow (Pinyin: Zhōu Guānghú). She was a Chinese-born Eurasian author of several books on modern China, novels set in East Asia, and autobiographical works, as well as a physician. She wrote in English and French. She died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 405 reviews
September 18, 2021
First published in 1962, Han Suyin’s Winter Love’s told in the first person by a young woman Red (Bettina). Now married, with a small child, Red’s obsessed by memories of a past affair. But Han Suyin’s powerful, evocative novella’s not so much about lost love as it is damage and self-delusion. An exploration of how the stories we’re told can too easily become the stories we tell about ourselves. Red reconstructs her time with Mara, a fellow student, in the last months of WW2. Red and Mara slowly become inseparable, their intense bond giving Mara the courage to leave her domineering husband to be with Red. But then Red deliberately destroys everything positive between them.
Han Suyin quickly makes it clear Mara and Red won’t last, just like countless, lesbian couples in the era’s popular pulps. But Han Suyin isn’t intent on reproducing a conventional, morality tale, with its obligatory warnings about the dangers of departing from the heterosexual script. Han Suyin’s approach’s more complicated, messier than that. Instead, she cleverly exploits the formulas on offer to explore what might happen to someone whose identity’s been shaped by these restrictive messages, the destructive impact of self-denial and internalised homophobia.
Han Suyin’s narrative plays with concepts of the predatory lesbian seducer, prominent at the time, but makes it clear these are pure fantasy, here a way for her central character to avoid confronting her own desires. She resurrects the notion of butch and femme role-playing as a mirror of “authentic” heterosexual relationships but at the same time dismantles it, raising broader questions around gender and rigid concepts of the feminine and the masculine.
However, although this is far more impressive than I anticipated, it’s not perfect. The more radical possibilities suggested by Han Suyin’s vision are undermined at various points and there’s a tendency to pack too much in, particularly in the concluding sections. It’s possible some of the more overwrought and slightly redundant material traces back to the novel’s semi-autobiographical origins. Han Suyin was a student in wartime London and, like Mara, desperate to escape an abusive marriage. But just how much Red and Mara’s experiences reflect her own is less clear – author Maureen Duffy once reported that Han Suyin refused to comment when asked that question. Another of Winter Love’s strong points is its atmosphere and convincing portrayal of wartime England in winter: the dull, overcast skies; cheerless, threadbare boarding houses; and seedy cafes. It sometimes seemed to deliberately echo Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair another account of a doomed love affair, recounted by a similarly unreliable, challenging, narrator.
Rating: 3.5
Han Suyin quickly makes it clear Mara and Red won’t last, just like countless, lesbian couples in the era’s popular pulps. But Han Suyin isn’t intent on reproducing a conventional, morality tale, with its obligatory warnings about the dangers of departing from the heterosexual script. Han Suyin’s approach’s more complicated, messier than that. Instead, she cleverly exploits the formulas on offer to explore what might happen to someone whose identity’s been shaped by these restrictive messages, the destructive impact of self-denial and internalised homophobia.
Han Suyin’s narrative plays with concepts of the predatory lesbian seducer, prominent at the time, but makes it clear these are pure fantasy, here a way for her central character to avoid confronting her own desires. She resurrects the notion of butch and femme role-playing as a mirror of “authentic” heterosexual relationships but at the same time dismantles it, raising broader questions around gender and rigid concepts of the feminine and the masculine.
However, although this is far more impressive than I anticipated, it’s not perfect. The more radical possibilities suggested by Han Suyin’s vision are undermined at various points and there’s a tendency to pack too much in, particularly in the concluding sections. It’s possible some of the more overwrought and slightly redundant material traces back to the novel’s semi-autobiographical origins. Han Suyin was a student in wartime London and, like Mara, desperate to escape an abusive marriage. But just how much Red and Mara’s experiences reflect her own is less clear – author Maureen Duffy once reported that Han Suyin refused to comment when asked that question. Another of Winter Love’s strong points is its atmosphere and convincing portrayal of wartime England in winter: the dull, overcast skies; cheerless, threadbare boarding houses; and seedy cafes. It sometimes seemed to deliberately echo Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair another account of a doomed love affair, recounted by a similarly unreliable, challenging, narrator.
Rating: 3.5
April 28, 2022
4.5 the beauty and suffering and joy and pain of lesbian desire
April 4, 2023
Winter Love was advertised in the back of my copy of
The Child Manuela
as part of Virago Books’ “Lesbian Landmarks” series. I checked it out of the library, devoured it, disappeared into it—and am reminded once again that for every classic still read and remembered, countless more await rediscovery. And that, as I have written on this site before, the rich history of queer literature before Stonewall does not get the respect, or readership, it deserves.
This is a novel from 1962 about two women in love, about the closet, about joy snatched from the jaws of pain, about the crushing weight of living and loving in secret, of curtains pulled tight around the heart, of love kept private, secret, safe, and also stifled, and also made—out of the greatest possible joy—a burden to be carried.
Of course, it is not only queer desire that finds itself stifled, choked, thrown away. And there are few evergreen questions in literature that interest me more than why we so often hurt the people we love. “When people suffer they take it out on the object of their love, because the object of their love is in their possession,” Han Suyin says. And “all our lives we must rend and tear and warp our love to reproduce the primal agony of birth, which is love and hate, joy and suffering, indissoluble together” (226). Because “I had not learned that in love there is also bondage, that resentment is always a part of love” (205). Because "alas, I too belonged to that dread company that fills the world, in whom body and mind have been sundered to rage at each other, and love lies to be slobbered over, unextricate from shame” (232).
As you may have gathered, Winter Love is achingly sad. It pulls that most incredible of literary tricks, to make the most obvious symbolism feel perfectly real and profound. The first time our heroes sleep together, a literal bomb falls on them (this is London, 1944). It really happened (such things do), and it meant nothing and everything. I didn't question it for a moment.
It is a gray, gray London winter, filled with the “screech of buses, the rumble of the Underground, the tremor of the stone underfoot; hurrying passers-by, shoulders hunched, pounding with feet eager to run into tea shops, to catch buses, away from the cold.” It is a “magic winter haunting and hurting me with its marvelous echoes. The shortest days of the year, when nothing had begun and nothing had ended, all the roads of life were alive, and time beat around me like a heart” (167).
It is a beautiful, beautiful book.
This is a novel from 1962 about two women in love, about the closet, about joy snatched from the jaws of pain, about the crushing weight of living and loving in secret, of curtains pulled tight around the heart, of love kept private, secret, safe, and also stifled, and also made—out of the greatest possible joy—a burden to be carried.
Of course, it is not only queer desire that finds itself stifled, choked, thrown away. And there are few evergreen questions in literature that interest me more than why we so often hurt the people we love. “When people suffer they take it out on the object of their love, because the object of their love is in their possession,” Han Suyin says. And “all our lives we must rend and tear and warp our love to reproduce the primal agony of birth, which is love and hate, joy and suffering, indissoluble together” (226). Because “I had not learned that in love there is also bondage, that resentment is always a part of love” (205). Because "alas, I too belonged to that dread company that fills the world, in whom body and mind have been sundered to rage at each other, and love lies to be slobbered over, unextricate from shame” (232).
As you may have gathered, Winter Love is achingly sad. It pulls that most incredible of literary tricks, to make the most obvious symbolism feel perfectly real and profound. The first time our heroes sleep together, a literal bomb falls on them (this is London, 1944). It really happened (such things do), and it meant nothing and everything. I didn't question it for a moment.
It is a gray, gray London winter, filled with the “screech of buses, the rumble of the Underground, the tremor of the stone underfoot; hurrying passers-by, shoulders hunched, pounding with feet eager to run into tea shops, to catch buses, away from the cold.” It is a “magic winter haunting and hurting me with its marvelous echoes. The shortest days of the year, when nothing had begun and nothing had ended, all the roads of life were alive, and time beat around me like a heart” (167).
It is a beautiful, beautiful book.
February 12, 2024
Published in the early 60s Han Suyin's Winter Love is an overlooked lesbian classic. Taking place in 1944 London, Winter Love is the type of unromantic love story that will definitely appeal to fans of Giovanni's Room and Madame Bovary. There was something about our narrator’s aloof, slightly disdainful, worldview that brought to mind Fleur Jaeggy and Magda Szabó. Whereas Suyin’s ability to render time and place brought to mind authors like Mary Renault and Kazuo Ishiguro. Like them, Suyin’s narrative hones in on indoor spaces, but the intimacy created by these enclosed spaces is ultimately stultifying, bringing to the fore unpleasant feelings and thoughts.
Permeated by unease, Winter Love is a tale exploring desire and obsession set against the backdrop of a bitterly cold winter in 1944 London. Our narrator Red is a college student who is well versed in the jealousies and crushes that are bound to occur in all female environments. But she readily dispatches her bosom friends in favor of pursuing her new classmate Mara, who happens to be married. Red seems exasperated and slightly irritated by Mara’s naive attitude, especially when it comes to her husband and money matters. Yet before long the two are spending most of their time together, with Mara often staying over at Red’s place. We know from the start that their brief and volatile affair is doomed and that Red goes on to marry a man whom she’d on-and-off frequented (often she gives in to his advances to comply with social expectations). Red and Mara bypass the honeymoon phase and find themselves locked in a fraught stalemate. Red’s attitude towards Mara is awful. Red is the one who pursues Mara, knowing fully well that the latter is married, and even so, she guilt-trips Mara about it, she then seems to want Mara gone or for the husband to take responsibility for her and is forever short with her. Red is incredibly jealous, possessive, and obsessive towards Mara. Her behavior towards Mara (and other people in general) skated close to the emotionally abusive, making Red into a rather detestable character. She’s cold, mean, and mercurial, and Mara often finds herself apologizing over nothing (perceived slights and so on). Mara herself was rather pitiable, mocked by her arrogant husband, and mistreated by her lover. They manage to get away from London, but their stay away brings about the end of their doomed affair. Winter Love is a very unflattering and unforgiving portrait of a love affair, but the author’s ability to hone in on and describe her narrator’s darkest and most ambiguous feelings and thoughts is certainly impressive. I found the writing incisive, and the characters’ back-and-forths to have very realistic rhythms. Permeated by doubt and contempt, Winter Love reads like an antithesis to love. Red desires Mara, but the nature of this desire often seems akin to the desire to ‘have’ something. Yet, once she has her, Red seems bored and irked by Mara, especially when it comes to discussions around money and their living situations. Suyin's crisp storytelling and Red's dreary outlook complement the novel's winter setting. The novel succeeds in making readers aware of the pressures shouldered by Red and her classmates, and the short-lived freedom from social norms and gender expectations they find in each other. But in the real world, against the humdrum of everyday life, these relationships stand little chance of a happy ending.
Not the ideal read for those who are looking for a melancholic, soft, sapphic love story. This novel is all hard edges. Strikingly ambivalent Winter Love is a deeply evocative yet uncomfortable read.
Permeated by unease, Winter Love is a tale exploring desire and obsession set against the backdrop of a bitterly cold winter in 1944 London. Our narrator Red is a college student who is well versed in the jealousies and crushes that are bound to occur in all female environments. But she readily dispatches her bosom friends in favor of pursuing her new classmate Mara, who happens to be married. Red seems exasperated and slightly irritated by Mara’s naive attitude, especially when it comes to her husband and money matters. Yet before long the two are spending most of their time together, with Mara often staying over at Red’s place. We know from the start that their brief and volatile affair is doomed and that Red goes on to marry a man whom she’d on-and-off frequented (often she gives in to his advances to comply with social expectations). Red and Mara bypass the honeymoon phase and find themselves locked in a fraught stalemate. Red’s attitude towards Mara is awful. Red is the one who pursues Mara, knowing fully well that the latter is married, and even so, she guilt-trips Mara about it, she then seems to want Mara gone or for the husband to take responsibility for her and is forever short with her. Red is incredibly jealous, possessive, and obsessive towards Mara. Her behavior towards Mara (and other people in general) skated close to the emotionally abusive, making Red into a rather detestable character. She’s cold, mean, and mercurial, and Mara often finds herself apologizing over nothing (perceived slights and so on). Mara herself was rather pitiable, mocked by her arrogant husband, and mistreated by her lover. They manage to get away from London, but their stay away brings about the end of their doomed affair. Winter Love is a very unflattering and unforgiving portrait of a love affair, but the author’s ability to hone in on and describe her narrator’s darkest and most ambiguous feelings and thoughts is certainly impressive. I found the writing incisive, and the characters’ back-and-forths to have very realistic rhythms. Permeated by doubt and contempt, Winter Love reads like an antithesis to love. Red desires Mara, but the nature of this desire often seems akin to the desire to ‘have’ something. Yet, once she has her, Red seems bored and irked by Mara, especially when it comes to discussions around money and their living situations. Suyin's crisp storytelling and Red's dreary outlook complement the novel's winter setting. The novel succeeds in making readers aware of the pressures shouldered by Red and her classmates, and the short-lived freedom from social norms and gender expectations they find in each other. But in the real world, against the humdrum of everyday life, these relationships stand little chance of a happy ending.
Not the ideal read for those who are looking for a melancholic, soft, sapphic love story. This novel is all hard edges. Strikingly ambivalent Winter Love is a deeply evocative yet uncomfortable read.
February 22, 2024
well......that was depressing
May 6, 2023
I finished this book and went for a walk, my head was too full of thoughts to put music in my ears, unusual for me, and as I walked the book reframed so much of my internal logic toward fear and carefulness and honesty and deception and self sabatoge and I don’t think I’ll be the same again since that walk, since reading this book and I am grateful.
May 18, 2023
It’s the year 1944 and while a new semester at the Horsham had just commenced, so did winter love. We follow the lives of Mara and Red; observing their friendship flourish into romance within the languid, London city. Written in the form of reminiscence filled with longing and regret, the prose forebodes a plaintive outcome. Therefore the narrative invariably imbues a sense of nostalgia that leaves you with a pang of sadness. After having read this book, I became a huge fan of Suyin for her eloquent writing and intricate prose. I was immersed, mesmerised and also elated because I felt that I read this book at the right time. Please read this if you haven’t already, it’s poignant, subtle, yet painful.
February 18, 2022
What five star ratings are made for. A wallop of feeling and yet so restrained and finely written that Han Suyin upped the emotion everywhere.
I feel so so so strongly about this book and these characters, that I don’t want to hear any criticism of this if you’re not a queer woman yourself. Maybe I’ll relax on this someday. Til then!
I feel so so so strongly about this book and these characters, that I don’t want to hear any criticism of this if you’re not a queer woman yourself. Maybe I’ll relax on this someday. Til then!
January 11, 2026
reading multiple deeply bleak books back to back was not my smartest move however this was so gorgeously written, captures the beauty and pain of lesbian love perfectly.
(Reread) - I still think about this book a lot and while rereading i have fallen back in love with it. The most haunting book i feel like my heart has been broken. So tragic for both women :(
(Reread) - I still think about this book a lot and while rereading i have fallen back in love with it. The most haunting book i feel like my heart has been broken. So tragic for both women :(
April 6, 2024
was well written and all but i just cant look past how much the main character annoyed me in the second half
May 21, 2024
I started reading this book the same week I started listening to Good Luck Babe by Chappell Roan, and the song encapsulates this story perfectly. Similar in tone to the Achillean Giovanni's Room, this story follows Red and Mara, two women in Second World War London, as they struggle to hide their relationship from Red's family and Mara's husband.
What made this story so interesting for me was Red's brutal honesty. While she seems to want to paint Mara in an ideal light, as the story progresses she has to come to terms with her own faults, and the failures that caused their relationship to break down. It's a complex, messy story that feels like someone's lived experience.
I was surprised by the ending, and the questions it left me with. We know throughout the book that Red chooses to marry a truly deplorable man, and I felt Red made this decision to punish herself for losing Mara. Unfortunately, neither we nor Red ever get any closure about Mara's future, and while that kept the realistic tone, I really wanted the answers.
What made this story so interesting for me was Red's brutal honesty. While she seems to want to paint Mara in an ideal light, as the story progresses she has to come to terms with her own faults, and the failures that caused their relationship to break down. It's a complex, messy story that feels like someone's lived experience.
I was surprised by the ending, and the questions it left me with. We know throughout the book that Red chooses to marry a truly deplorable man, and I felt Red made this decision to punish herself for losing Mara. Unfortunately, neither we nor Red ever get any closure about Mara's future, and while that kept the realistic tone, I really wanted the answers.
August 15, 2026
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆
I've been trying to write a coherent review for two weeks now. The reason it's taken me so long is that it broke my heart into so many pieces that even thinking about it again hurts.
It was truly a delightful surprise to come by Winter Love. I started reading it with a total of zero expectations, I just saw 1944, lesbians, affair with married classmate, and my brain just said !!!, especially at the lesbians part.
Now, I may be partial to lesbians, but believe me when I say this is a beautifully written book that should get a lot more praise. It captured the tragedy of these two characters with a subtlety I always long to see, and one thing that absolutely entranced me was how, despite its short length, it managed to build the descent of that vivid, love-foolish impulse of youthfulness ("Now I know it wasn’t, but then I was still at school and I had the reflexes of a schoolgirl") into a quiet acceptance of what cannot be changed. Not only our main character went through that evolution, but the prose itself had less and less pretty metaphors as the book advanced, leaving us instead with the curtains at the window, badly drawn with a most irritating gap where they wouldn’t meet or The more uncomfortable I was, the bluer and deeper the shades of the woods, the more Mara seemed happy, and finally that happiness without rhyme or reason made me irritable. It was fascinating to witness that. The lyrical quality was at certain points a little bit clumsy, maybe a bit over-repeated in the wrong moments and not as polished as I would've liked to in the defining ones, but you could feel the care and love the author put into this in such a way that it hardly mattered.
Another thing I was also astonished (and very, very glad) to see were the momentary reflections on queer isolation and lesbian sexuality—intrinsically linked to how top/bottom identities form and fluctuate—, how genuinely freeing but disorienting it is to experience attraction outside the patriarchal system. Honestly, I rarely see this kind of terror about stopping being a woman once removed from the world of men and how it's irremediably intertwined with the role of the giver in recent novels, as they're sometimes a little too sanitized and afraid of painting the wrong picture. Seeing this in a 1962 (!!!) novel was unexpected:
Initially, I was going to give this five stars because, as you can see from my ramblings, this work has a lot to offer. However, as other reviewers have said, the last 20 pages of the book weren't written with the same care as the rest. Events were rushed through that should have been given more attention. The ending was still correct, and the last few paragraphs were perfect, but the story's impact could have been greater if it had been able to breathe a little more.
Still, the flaws are minor and its offerings are endless. Truly, truly beautiful book that changed and cemented many of my thoughts on heteronormativity, isolation, the way we hurt others, and, above all, what is love and what it isn't.
Some of us are brought up to disfigure love into obscenity. Many of us are twisted to ugliness in thought and deed because we have been made afraid. We do not trust to tenderness any more, and without tenderness towards the other human being little is left but a sad and vicious performance of emotions or contact.
I've been trying to write a coherent review for two weeks now. The reason it's taken me so long is that it broke my heart into so many pieces that even thinking about it again hurts.
It was truly a delightful surprise to come by Winter Love. I started reading it with a total of zero expectations, I just saw 1944, lesbians, affair with married classmate, and my brain just said !!!, especially at the lesbians part.
Now, I may be partial to lesbians, but believe me when I say this is a beautifully written book that should get a lot more praise. It captured the tragedy of these two characters with a subtlety I always long to see, and one thing that absolutely entranced me was how, despite its short length, it managed to build the descent of that vivid, love-foolish impulse of youthfulness ("Now I know it wasn’t, but then I was still at school and I had the reflexes of a schoolgirl") into a quiet acceptance of what cannot be changed. Not only our main character went through that evolution, but the prose itself had less and less pretty metaphors as the book advanced, leaving us instead with the curtains at the window, badly drawn with a most irritating gap where they wouldn’t meet or The more uncomfortable I was, the bluer and deeper the shades of the woods, the more Mara seemed happy, and finally that happiness without rhyme or reason made me irritable. It was fascinating to witness that. The lyrical quality was at certain points a little bit clumsy, maybe a bit over-repeated in the wrong moments and not as polished as I would've liked to in the defining ones, but you could feel the care and love the author put into this in such a way that it hardly mattered.
Another thing I was also astonished (and very, very glad) to see were the momentary reflections on queer isolation and lesbian sexuality—intrinsically linked to how top/bottom identities form and fluctuate—, how genuinely freeing but disorienting it is to experience attraction outside the patriarchal system. Honestly, I rarely see this kind of terror about stopping being a woman once removed from the world of men and how it's irremediably intertwined with the role of the giver in recent novels, as they're sometimes a little too sanitized and afraid of painting the wrong picture. Seeing this in a 1962 (!!!) novel was unexpected:
And then suddenly it was not the way it had always been, but the reverse, for until now I had always given and as a lover, with hands and mouth and the apings of domination.
Initially, I was going to give this five stars because, as you can see from my ramblings, this work has a lot to offer. However, as other reviewers have said, the last 20 pages of the book weren't written with the same care as the rest. Events were rushed through that should have been given more attention. The ending was still correct, and the last few paragraphs were perfect, but the story's impact could have been greater if it had been able to breathe a little more.
Still, the flaws are minor and its offerings are endless. Truly, truly beautiful book that changed and cemented many of my thoughts on heteronormativity, isolation, the way we hurt others, and, above all, what is love and what it isn't.
When people suffer they take it out on the object of their love, because the object of their love is in their possession. They cannot stop themselves. This goes back to Adam taking it out on Eve, telling God it was her fault; and all our lives we must rend and tear and warp our love to reproduce the primal agony of birth, which is love and hate, joy and suffering, indissoluble together.
January 16, 2025
Published in 1962, Winter Love is an exceptional lesbian novel set in the last year of the second world war. Bettina, called Red, is a student of anatomy and zoology in London, living in uncomfortable "digs" in a city marked by the poverty of war. Red's world is changed when she meets Mara, a married woman who enters the school as a second year student. Red rapidly falls in love with Mara, and will do anything for her. Though this is not a happy book, it is an insightful portrait of the pressures placed on a queer love at this period, both the external pressures of secrecy and societal expectation, and the internal pressures of a need to confirm and to find financial stability. But queer love in itself is never shown to be at fault: the dangers are always the external forces around the couple. The story is told some years in the future, when Red has a husband and a baby, so we always know it to be a doomed affair, but Han Suyin captures the beauty of an intense love, against the backdrop of a bitterly cold London winter, and the stark beauty of the silvery river and the frost. It's a very immersive and gripping book, with two central characters who feel very genuine. I'm really glad that this has been republished and is more readily accessible.
March 22, 2025
That was BLEAK. And not in a way that I enjoyed. I can enjoy sad, depressing lesbian stories, I can enjoy lesbian stories with unlikeable main characters…but this just pissed me off. There were a few beautiful lines, and I didn’t have a major problem with the writing itself (but it also wasn’t great most of the time) but I hated Red. She was horrible to Mara, and I don’t feel like her circumstances or backstory justified her actions. She kept saying she loved her and then never once showed that she actually did.
I really expected more from this story so I’m really disappointed that I didn’t enjoy it.
I really expected more from this story so I’m really disappointed that I didn’t enjoy it.
September 6, 2022
*Libro.fm*
This was a « who the fuck needs men » and gay as fuck book, so I mean, absolutely. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t ENGAGED in the story and didn’t particularly liked the characters. The writing was fine! 7.5/10
This was a « who the fuck needs men » and gay as fuck book, so I mean, absolutely. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t ENGAGED in the story and didn’t particularly liked the characters. The writing was fine! 7.5/10
November 9, 2024
A deeply sad, gorgeously written queer classic.
There is one passage in particular which made me pause for a few moments to really take it in, and which will stick with me, always.
There is one passage in particular which made me pause for a few moments to really take it in, and which will stick with me, always.
October 20, 2025
Uma história de amor entre duas jovens mulheres na Londres da II Guerra Mundial. Tenso, envolvente e maravilhoso. Escrita emocional. Uma narrativa muito especial que merecia ser traduzida em Portugal.
April 23, 2023
Beautifully written, a reflection of young love, both pure and affected by trauma and the difficult circumstances surrounding it. Reading this book really solidified my understanding that I love historical sapphic stories. I really liked that the story didn't only depict sapphic love as gentle and tender, but showed how relationships between two people are still often cruel and flawed, that lesbians are still human beings with an entire spectrum and emotions and memories and trauma ingrained in their beings. The lyrical writing really lended itself to fully encompassing all that the narrator felt, buffeted along their stream of consciousness, her adoration, longing, anger, and desperation.
Viewed through her lens, we see different forms of sapphic love and attachment, but question the validity of her views when we stop to consider Mara's perspective. Her understanding of her other classmates temporary pairings with each other as not serious, her experiences with her old school teacher as predatory and of the grooming nature. Her experiences with Mara do not negate her own experiences and pains with other women, but we do get a sense that she prides her own feelings and emotions over understanding how other women feel in certain situations. Her experiences with her old school teacher almost seem to parallel how she treats Mara in the end, though she fails to understand how her own actions perpetuate the cycle of relationships she critiques throughout the novel. Similarly, her understanding of sapphic relationships based on heteronormative relationships, and only through her views of butch and femme / male and female counterparts was an interesting monologue that I wish had been explored more.
Overall, a beautifully written read that really submerges you into the setting of wintery London during WWII. Recommended for fans of Sarah Waters or Portrait of a Lady of Fire.
Viewed through her lens, we see different forms of sapphic love and attachment, but question the validity of her views when we stop to consider Mara's perspective. Her understanding of her other classmates temporary pairings with each other as not serious, her experiences with her old school teacher as predatory and of the grooming nature. Her experiences with Mara do not negate her own experiences and pains with other women, but we do get a sense that she prides her own feelings and emotions over understanding how other women feel in certain situations. Her experiences with her old school teacher almost seem to parallel how she treats Mara in the end, though she fails to understand how her own actions perpetuate the cycle of relationships she critiques throughout the novel. Similarly, her understanding of sapphic relationships based on heteronormative relationships, and only through her views of butch and femme / male and female counterparts was an interesting monologue that I wish had been explored more.
Overall, a beautifully written read that really submerges you into the setting of wintery London during WWII. Recommended for fans of Sarah Waters or Portrait of a Lady of Fire.
December 24, 2024
Le doy un cinco a pesar de la tragedia porque he estado enganchadísima. Me lo he ventilado así como me he ventilado mis posibilidades de conseguir una beca doctoral porque he pasado completamente de estudiar en condiciones para, en su lugar, leerme este libro. Qué decir, lo primero, go lesbians. Siento anticipar que, como no podía ser de otra manera, un libro sobre lesbianas publicado en los sesenta tiene que pasar por mucho castigo y sufrimiento. Pero oye, Han Suyin escribiendo sobre nosotras pa que las de ahora, las que tenemos más suerte, sepamos que existían y que el drama se tiene que evitarrrrrr !!! is this a message? agarra a tus amigues queer a tus amantes bolleras a tu gente disidente y vete a patinar sobre hielo o a beber vermús uno tras otro !!!! y también organízate, claro, que de un plumazo se te quita la posibilidad de hacer manitas en la pista de plaza españa 🫡
En serio, es precioso, está súper bien escrito y agradezco haberlo leído en diciembre, vacaciones de por medio, porque se vuelve más relatable. A veces la protagonista me caía un poco mal, pero pobrecita bastante tenía ya encima. También, me ha roto un poco el corazón 💔
Gracias marina por este préstamo que es más regalo que cualquier cosa en posesión 💫
En serio, es precioso, está súper bien escrito y agradezco haberlo leído en diciembre, vacaciones de por medio, porque se vuelve más relatable. A veces la protagonista me caía un poco mal, pero pobrecita bastante tenía ya encima. También, me ha roto un poco el corazón 💔
Gracias marina por este préstamo que es más regalo que cualquier cosa en posesión 💫
June 12, 2024
rip mara and red you would’ve loved timeless by taylor swift…
“even if we'd met on a crowded street in 1944
and you were headed off to fight in the war
you still would've been mine
we would have been timeless”
“even if we'd met on a crowded street in 1944
and you were headed off to fight in the war
you still would've been mine
we would have been timeless”
February 24, 2026
4.5⭐ I am devastated. Some aspects of this story definitely hit a bit too close to home. I don't know if this is a controversial opinion but I love the ending, I love every single sentence on those last pages.
Red might be my favorite literary fiction narrator of all time
Red might be my favorite literary fiction narrator of all time
September 13, 2023
I read books about doomed lesbians the same way straight men watch sports
May 5, 2024
Rather immersive, this one. Same sad, star-crossed love story. The plotline isn't much, but the prose is great. Sucks you in.
Lesbian love is foreign territory, but love and pain isn't. So, I could empathize with the characters, both of them actually. It can be said: how in that age, can't happen nowadays, can it? Yet, other people not minding their business is eternal.
Then, no one is to blame. Sometimes, you have the guts to go against the tide, sometimes you don't. You betray. You're sorry. You live with it.
Part of what it is.
Lesbian love is foreign territory, but love and pain isn't. So, I could empathize with the characters, both of them actually. It can be said: how in that age, can't happen nowadays, can it? Yet, other people not minding their business is eternal.
Then, no one is to blame. Sometimes, you have the guts to go against the tide, sometimes you don't. You betray. You're sorry. You live with it.
Part of what it is.
February 11, 2026
jag tror den här boken bröt sönder något i mig. jag kommer tänka på den, läsa om den, leva med den, i resten av mitt liv.
November 22, 2024
Una historia cargada de esperanza, de lucha por normalizar el amor sea de la forma que sea. La guerra como telón de fondo y la justificación del amor heterosexual para tapar lo que la sociedad aún no acepta.
Una narración exquisita que su autora, Han Suyin, exprime de forma magistral llevando los sentimientos a su máxima potencia. Una narración que te acoge y de forma sitil te integra en esta bella historia.
Una narración exquisita que su autora, Han Suyin, exprime de forma magistral llevando los sentimientos a su máxima potencia. Una narración que te acoge y de forma sitil te integra en esta bella historia.
March 8, 2026
Se mi avessero detto che un giorno avrei letto un libro focalizzato su una storia d’amore e lo avrei amato intensamente non ci avrei mai creduto.
Per carità, in questi anni mi è capitato di ricredermi in questo senso con storie magnetiche e strazianti come Le nostre mogli negli abissi o Le confessioni di Max Tivoli, ma l’associazione di “Amore d’inverno” a Rooney mi aveva fatta storcere il naso. Ma amo mettermi in discussione ed essere sincera.
Questo romanzo breve ha una grandissima potenza evocativa, grazie alle immagini vivide che regala e alle emozioni che sa dare. Impossibile non sentirsi vicine a Red, quasi come ad un’amica o a una sorella, e guardala commettere errori, gioire delle sue vittorie e struggersi assieme a lei per quell’amore totalizzante e capriccioso che la lega a Mara.
Ambientato durante la seconda guerra mondiale in Gran Bretagna, “Amore d’inverno” è una storia che emoziona, che fa arrabbiare e che, alla fine, lascia con qualche lacrima ad accarezzarci il viso. Perché Mara è sposata e lo stesso destino attende anche Red, che però è forse più consapevole di ciò che vuole. Forse.
In poche pagine non solo si ha una panoramica della Londra durante la guerra per chi non è al fronte - e quindi le donne -, ma anche quella di un grande amore forse acerbo, ma che si ricorda per tutta la vita.
Per carità, in questi anni mi è capitato di ricredermi in questo senso con storie magnetiche e strazianti come Le nostre mogli negli abissi o Le confessioni di Max Tivoli, ma l’associazione di “Amore d’inverno” a Rooney mi aveva fatta storcere il naso. Ma amo mettermi in discussione ed essere sincera.
Questo romanzo breve ha una grandissima potenza evocativa, grazie alle immagini vivide che regala e alle emozioni che sa dare. Impossibile non sentirsi vicine a Red, quasi come ad un’amica o a una sorella, e guardala commettere errori, gioire delle sue vittorie e struggersi assieme a lei per quell’amore totalizzante e capriccioso che la lega a Mara.
Ambientato durante la seconda guerra mondiale in Gran Bretagna, “Amore d’inverno” è una storia che emoziona, che fa arrabbiare e che, alla fine, lascia con qualche lacrima ad accarezzarci il viso. Perché Mara è sposata e lo stesso destino attende anche Red, che però è forse più consapevole di ciò che vuole. Forse.
In poche pagine non solo si ha una panoramica della Londra durante la guerra per chi non è al fronte - e quindi le donne -, ma anche quella di un grande amore forse acerbo, ma che si ricorda per tutta la vita.
April 17, 2023
I heard of this through McNally Editions and from the Lost Ladies of Lit podcast (one of my favorites! Everyone should listen to them) and it sounded fascinating. And it is very good. It’s also hard to read sometimes. Mara is trapped in a marriage she wants out of. Red (Bettina) has had issues with her own relationships in the past, but also wants to be inconspicuous. These two young women (Red is only almost twenty at the beginning) are both terrible but you also kind of root for them. Red is abusive in the narrative present and in her recollections of Mara. Mara is flighty and doesn’t know how to handle things. I’m glad I read this, and I would recommend it, but it’s hard going at some points.
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December 10, 2023Let’s go doomed lesbians!!
January 17, 2025
Jfc this was heartbreaking. Red's ever-increasing displays of internalized...everything - homophobia, misogyny, etc. - made me want to scream. Just as Suyin intended, I'm sure.
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