“We could all go mad in the mountains together.”

I adore books about mountaineering but then add a creepy, Late Victorian gothic setting and this book could have been written just for me. "Touching the Void in bloomers or The Turn of the Screw does the Matterhorn"

On a dark and stormy night Grace Farringdon sits alone in her family's empty home and reveals to the reader she is the only survivor of a women's college Antarctic Exploration Society. One of four feisty mountaineering women that had taken part in an expedition that went dreadfully wrong

Over the course of the evening a tale of obsession and madness unfolds, 'I am shivering in my memories.’

Full of foreboding, the reader is drawn into the tale and gradually you begin to doubt Grace's story. Is she telling the truth or lying, even more disturbing is she sane?.....

I loved this well written, very dark, menacing book that was compelling and beautiful at the same time

“There are hours more till sunrise. I'll play the piano for a while. It takes me deeper into the night...I have finished with college now and got my honours degree. I am going to the Alps where the air will thin, it might snow a little and I can be properly cold again”
( )

Grace Farringdon lives with her parents and older sister in turn of the 20th century London. She is stifled by them and lives for her play-acting with neighbour, Frank Black, when they each pretend to be a polar explorer. Grace is fascinated by the expeditions of the likes of Scott and Shackleton and wants to be just like them. She escapes home life to go to a women's college and forms the Antarctic Exploration Society with three friends. They climb mountains together and form alliances but we know from the beginning that something has gone wrong. As Grace looks back on those times the story unfolds slowly throughout the course of the book.

I loved this story. It's told in the first person and this enables Grace to tell the reader exactly what she is thinking and feeling. I had a strong sense of what it was like for her and her friends on the mountains and even her imagined stories of polar exploration were told so well that it became quite atmospheric. It certainly piqued my interest in such things, where before I had had little interest. The story has an element of the sinister about it and the writing is excellent. I'd highly recommend this book. It's reasonably short yet seems to have so much packed into it and is a very intriguing tale. ( )

Grace Farringdon, born at the time of polar exploration, was interested, from childhood, in explorers and their findings. She challenges expectations by going to college, where she finds other young women with a love for the subject. Grace and her three college friends learn to climb and manage to organize some outings, one of which ends in tragedy. The author compares Grace's life with that of her sister, a more traditional woman, and reflect on the limitations and opportunities available for women in the UK at the time. An entertaining novel, with an unreliable narrator. ( )

It is 1938 and the eve of the anniversary of a terrible event that happened fifteen years previously. Grace Farringdon is trapped in her Dulwich home, afraid to venture outside, reminiscing about her life and the path that led her to that incident in the Swiss Alps.

Contrary to some other reviewers, I did see how the publisher came to liken this novel to Barbara Vine: I was reminded of her dark and haunting novel A Dark Adapted Eye, a book that gains more significance with its second and subsequent readings. The same is true, in my opinion, for When Nights Were Cold. It is a book that defies easy categorisation as it is part historical novel, part psychological drama. It takes the form of journal entries, to all appearances written over a long period of time, that we learn of Grace's childhood and upbringing: her dream of visiting Antarctica as a member of Shackleton's expedition team, the defiance of her parents' wishes when she enrols in a college for ladies, her founding of the Candlin College Antarctic Exploration Society, her decision to go climbing with her three other Society friends in Wales and then Switzerland without chaperones or guides. I thought Susanna Jones captured the turbulence of the first twenty years of the 20th century well, a time of immense social changes, particularly for women. Some of her descriptions and allegories made me smile, especially the stiff conventions that surrounded the education of women and their "proper" conduct, something that comes across as faintly ridiculous only 100 years later. I won't give anything more away of the plot between the first page and the last than the synopsis above, but suffice to say that the complaints I had initially regarding the narration's disjointedness and confusion about timelines all get resolved in the end after finishing the book. I specifically went back to reread the first two chapters in this new light and it's all there, except the reader doesn't attach significance to the clues the author has cleverly left at the first reading. I felt that even the designer of this uncorrected copy was complicit (I believe the hardcover will have a different look). In my opinion it doesn't quite deserve five stars, but I might feel differently once I've read it a second time and come to appreciate how the author has led us along all this time. Well worth reading and rereading.

(This review was originally written as part of Amazon's Vine programme.) ( )

The book opens with Grace dreaming of climbing the Matterhorn. We are told that the morrow will be the anniversary of some momentous event that Grace doesn’t really want to remember – but now the train of thought is started, she cannot help but reminisce.

The story then moves back to Grace’s youth. Her father’s stories of polar expeditions fill her imagination, and she longs to escape her mundane life. Despite parental resistance, Grace goes to college and studies science. There she meets up with like minded young women and forms the Antarctic Exploration Society.

15 years later, Grace looks back on their last climb together (of which, we know she is the only survivor). She unfolds for us a story of female friendship and family tensions, of fascination with polar exploration and longing for adventure, of social change, and in the end, tragedy.

I loved the way the story unfolded, and especially the way the reader gradually comes to doubt Grace’s sanity and/or the truthfulness of her retelling of events. I found the book very atmospheric, and it has some lovely descriptive passages. On the down side, I wasn’t too convinced by the characterisations of the other women, and I would have liked it to gather more pace and tension towards the end. ( )