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31

Feb/Mar 2011 www.esb.ie/em

Life

Travel to the sun! Perpignan highlights
Life, Page 32

Paycheck changes How the budget effects your wages Life, page 31

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a selection of your photography

‘Canadian Rockies’ by Maria Bennett, Services.

‘Copenhagan’ by Kevin Grace, Energy Int, Gen Ops.

‘Watchful Eye of the Heron’ by Cliona McGovern.

Zebra Crossing’ by Liam Guckian.

It’s ‘Up up and away’ by Joe McGrath, Energy International.

‘Robin Red Breast’ by Vincent Flynn, ES BI.

‘Dromaan in Spring’ by Johnathan Sandham, ESB Telecoms.

‘Blooming Oleander’ by Susan Small, ICT.

By Katherine Thorne

BOOK REVIEW

The Winter Ghosts
By Kate Mosse
Published by Orion Books
Price €10.99

THE YEAR IS 1928. Englishman Freddie Watson sets off on a trip to France. His health is uncertain, but more to the point, he is still mourning the loss of his older brother, George, who died in the Great War ten years previously.

Freddie is an isolated figure on the edge of life’s experience. He seems Ill-suited to the events that overtake him in France.

While in the Pyrenees, he makes a trip in his Austin car. Unfortunately, he ends up in the hills and crashes his car on cold, snow-covered terrain. After some time, he regains consciousness and trudges painfully along the cold mountain paths. Eventually, he reaches a small town where he is warmly welcomed by an hotelier.

His real adventures begin when the hotelier invites him to a celebration that night in the local town hall. He attends the event and becomes enthralled by a young woman called Fabrissa,

Subsequently, his memories of the night’s events are at variance with those of other people who attended. However, in a historical context his strange experiences hold a validity of their own. It is when Freddie accompanies some men back to the hills to retrieve his car that his most amazing experiences occur.

This is really a ghost story with a difference. In essence it recalls and recreates the horrific persecutions of the Cathars in the south of France in the thirteenth century.

The author manages to offer an amazing tribute to all who suffered during, and after, the insanity of persecution and conflict. She does this through linking the sufferings of the Great War with those of a much earlier, localised, but equally horrific, event. In many ways, this is a sad story but it is a great read.

.....Freddie is an isolated figure on the edge of life’s experience......