Wintering
Peter Geye, 2016
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101969991
Summary
A true epic: a love story that spans sixty years, generations’ worth of feuds, and secrets withheld and revealed.
One day, elderly, demented Harry Eide steps out of his sickbed and disappears into the brutal, unforgiving Minnesota wilderness that surrounds his hometown of Gunflint.
It's not the first time Harry has vanished. Thirty-odd years earlier, in 1963, he'd fled his marriage with his eighteen-year-old-son Gustav in tow. He'd promised Gustav a rambunctious adventure, two men taking on the woods in winter.
With Harry gone for the second (and last) time, unable to survive the woods he'd once braved, his son Gus, now grown, sets out to relate the story of their first disappearance—bears and ice floes and all—to Berit Lovig, an old woman who shares a special, if turbulent, bond with Harry.
Wintering is a thrilling adventure story wrapped in the deep, dark history of a rural town. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969-70 ca.
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Minnesota; M.F.A., University of New Orleans; Ph.D., Western
Michigan University
• Currently—lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Peter Geye is an American author with (so far) three novels under his belt: Safe from the Sea (2010), The Lighthouse Road (2012), and Wintering (2016). He was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, attending the city's South High. He enrolled in the school's magnet program, which encouraged learning by having students pursue their areas of interest. Geye pursued ski jumping, flirting, and being a wiseacre.
His love of literature came after cracking a joke during English class. When his teacher retorted that "it's easier to be a smart ass if you've actually read the book." Geye took up the challenge and plunged into the book that night. It turned out to be Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and Geye was hooked. As he explained to his hometown paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune: it was a near "religious experience. I was smitten. I wanted to create for others the feeling that I was having."
Still, after high school he pursued his passion for ski jumping, moving to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where he skied every day and dreamed of Olympic championships. But one day, he told the Star Tribune, he realized "it was time to grow up."
Geye went on to receive his BA from the University of Minnesota, his MFA from the University of New Orleans, and his PhD from Western Michigan University, where he taught creative writing and was editor of Third Coast. Nevertheless, it took him 10 years to find his identity as a writer. Along the way, he has been a bartender, bookseller, banker, copywriter, and cook. (From the author's website and Minneapolis Star Tribune.)
Book Reviews
Fans of Per Petterson’s fabulous novel Out Stealing Horses should pick up Peter Geye’s latest Wintering. Not in a hurry for the story to unfold, but aware of his pacing, Geye let’s readers learn about what really happened the winter that Gus and his father Harry set off on canoes to spend winter in the wild with only this as an explanation: "Folks always chase their sadness around. Into the woods. Up to the attic. Out onto the ice.… As you piece together the story, it becomes clear that no one knows the whole of it. To which Berit points out, "Who ever does?" READ MORE …
Abby Fabiaschi - LitLovers
A book about love and revenge, families and small towns, history and secrets.… [A] deftly layered and beautifully written novel that owes as much to William Faulkner and it does to Jack London.… Make no mistake: Geye is a skillful, daring writer with talent to burn. Simultaneously epic in scope and deeply personal, Wintering is a remarkable portrait of the role that one’s environment—and neighbors—can play in shaping character and destiny.
Skip Horack - San Francisco Chronicle
Suspense, unforgettable characters, powerful landscapes, and even more powerful emotions.
John Timpane - Philadelphia Inquirer
Gripping.… A page-turning cross between Jack London’s naturalism and Jim Harrison’s poetic symbolism. . . . [Stitches] together two frequently dissociated strands in American literature: its dramas of beset manhood and its domestic chronicles.… Wintering gives us both, vividly imagining an outward bound journey that eventually brings us home to a fuller understanding of ourselves.
Mike Fischer - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
If Jack London’s Yukon tales married William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County’s blood battles, their thematic and geographic offspring would be Peter Geye’s Wintering.… There’s a lot to love about this novel: the beauty of the wilderness, the tenderness of relationships, the craft.… [There] is the feeling you get at the funeral of a loved one — how you ache to hear the stories you never knew so that you might round out the man.… But in the sharing of stories there is healing, if not complete comprehension — and that, it seems to me, is the point and triumph of this novel.
Christine Brunkhorst - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Geye’s powerful third outing [after The Lighthouse Road, 2012] journeys to the frozen places in the American landscape and the human heart.… Capturing the strength and mystery of characters who seem inextricable from the landscape, Geye’s novel is an unsentimental testament to the healing that’s possible when we confront our bleakest places.
Publishers Weekly
Beautifully written [and] supported by immaculately conceived characters [and] Geye’s instinctive sense of narrative movement.… The relatively small and enclosed community is Geye’s perfect laboratory for exploring human nature. —Brad Hooper
Booklist
Geye’s assured narrative gradually unfolds a Jack London-like tale of survival blended with a Richard Russo-like picture of small-town intrigue.… Geye dips into history with ease and comes up with a story as contemporary as anything flashing across our screens today. Wintering is a novel for the ages. —Bruce Jacobs
Shelf Awareness
Geye has chosen a complex narrative strategy, one that mirrors the complexity of the relationships he dramatizes.… Reminiscent of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Geye’s narrative takes us deep into both human and natural wilderness.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is “wintering” and why do you think the author chose this term as the title for his book? Why does Harry want his son, Gus, to go with him into the wilderness and why does he choose to embark on this journey as the winter season is approaching?
2. At the opening of the novel, Berit Lovig says that “two stories began” the day that Gus came to see her in November. She says, “One of them was new and the other as old as this land itself.” (5) What does she mean by this? What is the story that is “as old as [the] land itself”?
3. Who reveals or narrates the two stories and who is the audience? Do you believe that they are reliable narrators? Why or why not? Does any single point of view seem to dominate the text? Explain. Does the book ultimately answer the question of why these characters wish to exchange their stories?
4. Explore the setting of the book. How does the setting mirror or otherwise help to reveal the psychological and emotional states of the characters who inhabit it? What other information does the setting allow us to access about the characters that we would perhaps not be privy to if they lived in a different place? How does “wilderness” come to work symbolically or metaphorically? What key themes does the setting help to reveal?
5. Why is Gus scared before he sets out into the wilderness with his father? What does he believe that they risk leaving behind? Why does Gus choose to go with his father rather than attend one of the colleges that has accepted him?
6. According to Berit, what is most important to the inhabitants of Gunflint? Does the rest of the novel support or disprove this view? Where in the novel can we see evidence of what means the most to Berit’s neighbors and family?
7. Gus tells Berit that “history and memory aren’t the same thing.” (76) What does he say is the difference between the two? Do you agree with him?
8. Why does Gus go after the bear even though he knows it could kill him? What does he cite as his primary motivation or influence? Does he seem to have learned anything from this experience? Is he changed by it? If so, how?
9. What does Gus say is his religion (138)? How does he come to find this religion and what feelings accompany it? Do any of the other characters seem to share this religion? In what ways?
10. What does the book seem to suggest about our relationship with the unknown past? How does Harry’s view of his mother or Gus’s view of his grandmother, for instance, change as secrets are revealed? What, if anything, changes for Gus and Berit as they exchange stories and expose secrets? Does the book ultimately suggest whether it is better to face the past or to accept that there are things that can’t be known?
11. How are Gus and Harry changed by their experience in the wilderness? Berit asks Gus if he believes that Harry’s time in the borderlands took his true nature away from him. How does Gus respond? Would you say that the experience altered the true nature of either of the men? Why or why not?
12. Although the novel centers on the story of Gus and Harry, Berit also reflects on her own life. How does she feel about the choices she has made? What regrets does she have? How has hearing Gus’s story affected her? What does the story make her wonder about or reconsider?
13. How does the book also create a dialogue around the idea of civilization through its exploration of wilderness? How does the story of Charlie Aas and the Aas family inform this dialogue? What does the book suggest is the true definition of civilization?
14. Consider the theme of discovery and its variations—rediscovery, self-discovery, and so on. What are the main characters in the novel hoping to discover? What discoveries do they make? What causes them to rediscover or reevaluate what they think they know about themselves and others?
15. What is the story that Berit says was the “prologue” to Harry’s life? (295) Does learning this story from Berit change Gus’s opinion of his father? Does it change your own assessment of Harry’s character? What does this indicate about the way that we come to know other people and the judgments we make?
16. Gus and Berit tell stories to each other about Harry; both feel that they have information of which the other is unaware. What does the novel reveal about storytelling and perspective? How does their respective storytelling shape or influence the other’s perspective? What does this suggest about the tradition of storytelling?
17. Explore the novel’s theme of crossing borders. How do the characters in the novel cross boundaries or otherwise reach beyond that with which they are familiar? What inspires them to challenge these boundaries? How are they changed by their experiences of physical and/or psychological boundary crossing?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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