5/27/2023 0 Comments The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Growing increasingly obsessed with Alec, Isabel assumes the role of his wartime lover and finds out the truth about her seemingly dour landlady, Mrs Atkinson.Īs ever, Dunmore writes with passion and precision her recreation of an early Fifties world of ‘shortages, rules and ration books’ where houses exude the ‘damp smell of polish, Jeyes fluid and old food’ and a middle-class woman who wishes to work is accused of making ‘yourself common’ is immaculate. In her new novella, Helen Dunmore continues this association of ghosts and coats, when her protagonist, Isabel Carey, a young doctor’s wife recently moved to a bleak East Riding town, puts on an old RAF greatcoat she finds in her landlady’s cupboard and is confronted by the spectre of its former owner, Alec, a fighter pilot.ĭespite her deep love for her husband, she is attracted to Alec, sleeping with him when, in Dunmore’s fine phrase, ‘time had cracked and given them to each other’. Nikoai Gogal ends his classic story, The Overcoat, with the dead clerk, Akaky, haunting St Petersburg stealing overcoats. ![]()
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