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