Winter in Madrid

I kept reading all the way through to the end of this, simply because I didn't know much about the Spanish civil war. If you already have a certain knowledge of the war, I don't think you'll find much of interest here. Sansom is a decent writer, but I'm not sure he should be writing fiction. He does an ok job of giving us some insight on the different fractions of the war. But mainly this is obviously meant to be a book about people - their emotions and their faith. Secondly it's also a sort of crime novel, and I think Sansom fails at both aspects. He doesn't manage to give you much of an emotional involvement in the characters. There are several tragic incidents during the story, but as a reader I don't really feel like I care. I don't feel any kind of attachment to the people in the book. Especially the main character - Harry - suffers from a total lack of personality. He's just nice (and boring). A few times he has some kind of outrage - at least that's what the writer tells us. But this episodes aren't very believable, and they seem to be restricted to one sentence or statement from Harry. Afterwards there is no indication his usual state of mind has been altered....
As for the "crime story", it just doesn't hold water. He doesn't manage to build up much excitement as we go along, and the little there is, is totally ruined by the lack of logic towards the end. Sansom introduces a couple of "surprise twists" in the last part of the story. And they are kind of surprising - considering they make absolutely no sense at all. I'm not gonna ruin the story for you, but suffice to say people turn up where you don't expect them to turn up. And when Sansom tries to explain why they turn up it - as already stated - makes absolutely no sense!
If you want a quick introduction to the Spanish civil war, this might not be your worst choice. But skip the ending, and don't expect any emotional involvement.

The biter bit . . . (4/5 people found this helpful)

Oh, dear! Clearly, C.J. Sansom didn't bother checking the final proofs of Winter In Madrid, or he'd have spotted his monumental howler four lines from the bottom of Page 456 when Luis refers to Barbara as "Señora Brett".
But that's not all. Throughout the story Sansom's memory seems to have been buried somewhere out there in the rubble of Forties Madrid.
If not, why has he peppered his manuscript with variations of the same old throwaway words: "Barbara bit her lip" . . . "She bit her lip" . . . "Bernie bit his lip"? After groaning at examples galore, I pondered whether Sansom was having a private joke . . . then I began to dread even turning the page.
If Sansom really didn't notice this jarring repetition, I'm utterly astonished.
If Pan Books' highly paid editors missed it, too, it beggars belief.
Oh, but come on, surely ONE of our national newspapers' illustrious book reviewers picked up on it?
Er, incredibly . . . no.
By the time I reached Page 502, when Bernie "bit his lip" for the last time, I was on the verge of giving up.
And I dearly wish I had.
For the climax turned out to be stultifyingly, lip-bitingly lack-lustre.

Historical wetting, heart-warmingly suspicious (1/2 people found this helpful)

This is one book, I do favour out of all those I have read in the past years. It gets you thinking about your past, your history, your origin and of course about human precipice. That's what keeps the book turning over. It's very well written and one hitting novel, that I recommend.
I give you the advice, it may very well not be everybody's favourite, but give it a try!

A compelling and fascinating read (1/3 people found this helpful)

I've read one of Sansom's Matthew Shardlake Tudor novels and enjoyed its style and the compulsion to turn the page, unable to put it down.so I thought I would give this a go, once again fairly hard to put down. Winter in Madrid is a wonderful novel. It's rich and many layered, displaying a real competence on the authors part with his usual command of history.
It's set in Madrid (surprised?!) during the early part of the second world war, following the Spanish revoloution and the counter by Francos' fascists. Sansom provides a wonderful evocation of a shattered city - shattered both physically and spiritually, and captures a sense of decay in the moral fibre of its new rulers under Franco after the civil war, as well as the desperation of those on the losing side.

Harry Brett has left the army after Dunkirk suffering from shell shock. He is recruited by the British government to work undercover in Spain, as a spy on Sandy, who is a chracter who seizes every chance he can to make money providing services to the falangist regime.Harry is a stoic understated chap who has previous connections to Sandy and Spain. The British need to keep Spain out of the war; Sandy Forsyth could ruin this. Harry knows Spain well, having travelled there ten years previously with another school friend who joined the communists in the war against Franco.The novel never appear to take sides in spite of evoking the fiercly held passions of the main characters.Interwoven amongst all this is a love story. A novel of loss, greed war and cynicism, I highly recommend it to you.
The ending isn't what you might expect but.............

Too many easy coincidences (by far) (26/35 people found this helpful)

1920s - Harry (apolitical and middle-of-the-road), Bernie (a communist) and Sandy (a rule-breaking self-serving individualist) went to the same public school together. Harry liked both Sandy and Bernie, but of course Sandy and Bernie didn't like each other.
1931 - Harry visits Madrid with Bernie who makes friends with a socialist family in Madrid and later joins the International Brigades and fights for the Republicans. He has an affair with Barbara, an English woman working for the Red Cross. Bernie disappears, feared dead. Harry goes to Spain to help Barbara find further news of Bernie, but is unsuccessful.

By coincidence, in Spain after the the Civil War, trying to make money for himself is...Sandy, who also by coincidence meets... Barbara, who he takes as his 'wife'.

The story proceeds during WW2 with Britain wanting to keep Franco from entering the war as an ally of Germany. So after being wounded at Dunkerque Harry is recruited as a 'translator' to go to Madrid to spy on ....yes, his old school friend Sandy, who by now is in business cahoots with Falangists in an enterprise that may enable Franco to defy the British blockade and enter the war.

Barbara begins working for a catholic orphanage, and on her first day a new child is brought in who coincidentally is the only survivor from the socialist family with whom Bernie was friends. This child plays no further part in the story, and Barbara ceases to work at the orphanage.

Harry meanwhile has begun a relationship with a local republican woman, who as a child coincidentally used to visit her uncle, a priest in a village which Harry and Barbara must later visit, secretly.

This is a lazily constructed story, the plot hanging on big coincidences, with incidental events inserted into the story with the 'lubrication' of other fortuitous and unnecessary coincidences.

Some of the novel's major events don't even make sense within the storyline.
After the truth of Sandy's business venture is uncovered, Sandy (who eschews all public school rules of honour and loyalty) disappears, only to re-emerge in a ludicrous attempt to prevent something happening that he perceives to be a betrayal of loyalty, at unnecessary risk to himself. And then to add even further silliness to an implausible plot, a Monarchist government minister springs a trap on Harry and Barbara merely to embarrass Sandy when the very reason to embarrass him no longer exists!

The characters are all caricatures and stereotypes - from the vicious prison camp commander who inevitably smacks his thigh with a riding crop, to the public school educated, class-conscious diplomats; from the English baddie who isn't quite as bad as the fascist baddies, to the English goodie who saves life of the brother of a low-class senorita who just had to have been training as a doctor before Franco took over; not forgetting the English woman who's life has been blighted ever since school days by the bullying she suffered at the tongues of beastly girls who called her names like 'specky' and 'frizzy four-eyes', about which we are reminded countless times.

But more coincidences irritate. A priest, able to recognise one of the main characters just happens to be staying in the village for that night only just when Harry and Barbara arrive to undertake a secret rendezvous.
And at the very end of the novel, back in England after the war, the author cannot resist just one more absurd coincidence, and by this time the reader ought to be groaning "Oh, no not..."

And if you think you might read it to get some well-researched information about civil war and post civil war Spain, there is little other than a few names and locations, and average descriptions of civil hardship.

The story had the potential to be interesting. Just a little more effort by the author could have introduced the characters without the need for so many of them to have had prior knowledge of each other. And they didn't need to be shepherded through the plot by artificial and all too easy coincidences, some of which are just silly and utterly unnecessary.

C.J. Sansom

Reader Reviews:

Historically slightly interesting, but otherwise.... (0/0 people found this helpful)

The biter bit . . . (4/5 people found this helpful)

Historical wetting, heart-warmingly suspicious (1/2 people found this helpful)

A compelling and fascinating read (1/3 people found this helpful)

Too many easy coincidences (by far) (26/35 people found this helpful)

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