Title: We never died in winter yet, and other stories
First published: 1952
Description: The book is made up four stories.  The first which gives its title to the collection is the longest at about 100 pages and deals with a family reunion for the occasion of a funeral.  The second story "The Normal Ones" is a narrative written in the person of a malignant dwarf filled with bitterness against those around him (the "normal ones" of the title) - the blurb describes it as a "triumph of the macabre" and this is not an unfair assessment.  The third story "The Rehearsal" concerns two parents bracing themselves to tell their 19-year-old daughter that she is adopted.  The final story "Mr Whellan Thinks Of Everything" is a story of love in middle age.
The author was the wife of Professor John D. Jump, the editor of Byron's poetry and one-time Chancellor of the University of Manchester to whom this book is dedicated.  She had two children, Ruth and Sue.  I believe that Barbara Jump died sometime in the late 1960s. I was given my copy of this book by Ruth about thirty years ago, and learned from her that Barbara Jump wrote several other novels but that this was her only published work.  I'm sorry that I can't give a fuller description of the book but it is some years now since I read it and I am relying here on my memory of it and a cursory leafing through of its pages before writing this account.
I would say that it is the two central stories which have left the deepest impression on me.  "The Rehearsal" particularly in which the first trial of a new washing-machine is made into a metaphor for the parents' first hesitant (and abortive) attempt to speak to their child is rather fine - something like Katherine Mansfield perhaps.
Subjects: Adoption, dwarf
Places: Richmond, Cocytus
People: Groucho Marx
Time periods: 1940-1950