Un paracadutista, l’americano di religione ebrea Sam, atterra con il suo aereo tra i monti sopra la piccola casa. There are bad things happening and Helena witnesses them, yet there's so little emotion here that even things that should have been frightening just fell flat. Example: the hospital. You hide under the bed while a nurse is raped on top of it and it warrants a mere three or four sentences? Then it's never mentioned again? I would think the trauma of that would evoke a lot more reaction. As I said above, there's a lot more emotion when it comes to the sisters hating on each other or blabbering about their family history than actual traumatic events. This is an amazing story of Helena and Ruth, 18 year old identical twins raising their three younger siblings in a small town in Poland during WW2. They are identical in looks but they are very different from each other in their behaviors. Ruth is more domestic and lady like, Helena is definitely more adventurous and used to the outdoors. As they grow older, they begin to have secrets from each other.

The setting is key. Isolated from the rest of the country, like many rural Poles, Helena and Ruth struggle for daily survival among food rationing, suspicious neighbors, and the looming threat of winter. Their mother lies dying in a Jewish hospital in Krakow — the only place that can care for her — and stalwart Helena makes the long trek to the city every week to visit her, while introspective Ruth stays behind to tend the children, nursing a recent heartbreak. Then Helena stumbles upon an injured American paratrooper in the woods and decides to hide him; this act of mercy sets the stage for a passionate affair and betrayal that changes the sisters’ lives forever.

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Vita dura, cibo scarso e tanta fame danno poco spazio alle due giovani donne che lottano con le unghie e con i denti per tenere uniti i loro cari. Everything is different in winter. The people disappear insideand count on one another. The film opens with a well-coifed woman in her 60s,in a fur coat, making her way across a field in bitter cold. This is Elspeth( Phyllida Law), and she is on her way to the house of her daughter Frances( Emma Thompson). She fears losing her. Frances' husband has died, and she hasretreated into an angry silence beyond mourning. Perhaps she will leaveScotland and move away with her teenage son Alex ( Gary Hollywood). Non manca l’azione rocambolesca che, se non fosse ispirata a tanti casi veri, non sfigurerebbe in un film.

In 1921 the RIC and the Auxiliary forces were unforgiving of the guerrilla tactics employed by the IRA. Spies infiltrated all sides and Tom Harkin is soon entrenched in a cat and mouse game of survival. Trust was a very important tool but who to give it to was a dangerous act easily resulting in torture and death if the wrong ear overheard a conversation. Tom Harkin is unsettled as he takes in the decay of Kilcolgan House, a house very much in decline from when he had been there in previous happier times. There is an air of unease, a threatening atmosphere that is heightened by his visions of the dead. Are these apparitions just the imagination of an overwrought person or is there something of the supernatural afoot? The film is based on Sharman MacDonald's play, [2] premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse (in the Quarry studio theatre, 23 January to 18 February 1995) before transferring to the Almeida Theatre in London (14 March to 15 April 1995). A stirring novel of first love in a time of war and the unbearable choices that could tear sisters apart, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan's Tale While identical in outward appearance, Helena and Ruth are actually as different as chalk and cheese. Helena is a bit of a tomboy and was her father’s companion of choice when it came to hunting expeditions and performing tasks around the home. Ruth has always been regarded as the prettier of the two and is the one imbued with the more traditionally feminine traits – so the pair has fallen into the roles of male and female parents, with Ruth responsible for running the home and the bulk of the child-rearing, while Helena chops wood, fixes things, and hunts for food. Life is a constant struggle for the eighteen-year-old Nowak twins as they raise their three younger siblings in rural Poland under the shadow of the Nazi occupation. The constant threat of arrest has made everyone in their village a spy, and turned neighbor against neighbor. Though rugged, independent Helena and pretty, gentle Ruth couldn’t be more different, they are staunch allies in protecting their family from the threats the war brings closer to their doorstep with each passing day.

Then Helena discovers an American paratrooper stranded outside their small mountain village, wounded, but alive. Risking the safety of herself and her family, she hides Sam--a Jew--but Helena's concern for the American grows into something much deeper. Defying the perils that render a future together all but impossible, Sam and Helena make plans for the family to flee. But Helena is forced to contend with the jealousy her choices have sparked in Ruth, culminating in a singular act of betrayal that endangers them all--and setting in motion a chain of events that will reverberate across continents and decades. An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Proprio Helena lo incontra e lo cura fino a innamorarsene, nonostante ciò non può nasconderlo nella sua dimora senza essere costretta a svelarne l’esistenza a Ruth.Working undercover, Harkin must delve into the house's secrets—and discover where, in this fractured, embattled town, allegiances truly lie. But Harkin too is haunted by the ghosts of the past and by his terrible experiences on the battlefields. Can he find the truth about Maud's death before the past—and his strange, unnerving surroundings—overwhelm him? Cari lettori, accogliamo il ritorno di questa bravissima autrice con un’ovazione e tuffiamoci nella storia ambientata nella Polonia invasa dai nazisti, in un piccolo paese ai confini di un bosco dove in una casa solitaria vivono le gemelle, Ruth e Helena, con due sorelline più piccole e un fratello.

The girls are close – as twins often are – but there are lots of resentments bubbling under the surface, too. Helena resents Ruth for being their mother’s favourite, while Ruth envies the fact that Helena gets to escape their small dwelling every so often. It’s not that Ruth particularly wants to be out trudging through the forest on the weekly visit to the hospital, or out in the cold chopping firewood, it’s more that she is jealous of that little bit of freedom and time to herself that Helena has at those times.Helena and Ruth are twin sister from a small village in Poland during the WWII. With their mother hospitalized they had to start taking care of their three younger siblings. The war is getting closer and supplies are scarce. Things are very dangerous and people are disappearing everyday. As the sisters struggle in their daily life, the rivalry and jealousy between them affects some of their actions and might prove dangerous after Helena saves an American solider and tries to help him. The Anglo-Irish community had their homes burned from under them by the IRA in a bid to remove ‘the foreigners’ and return the land to the Irish who were tenants on their own soil. Poverty was rife within the cities but was very much more evident in the rural communities.