Choices - Fiction
House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore
House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore
Helen Dunmore has published eight novels and won numerous awards, including the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year. She is also a poet, children's novelist and short-story writer.
Her latest novel is set in Finland in 1901. Eeva, the young orphaned daughter of a revolutionary, is sent from the orphanage to work as housekeeper for Thomas, a widowed country doctor. Her challenging, independent, enigmatic presence disturbs Thomas as much as it fascinates him. Their relationship will shatter all the certainties of his life. Eeva, however, longs to return to Helsinki, where her early childhood was spent.
But Finland is in political ferment – the power of the Russian Empire over its subject peoples is growing more oppressive, but resistance to the Tsar's rule is growing too, both in Finland and in Russia.
Longlisted for the Orange Prize 2006
10 copies
