A Girl in Winter

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