Sweetgirl
Travis Mulhauser, 2016
Ecco/HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062400833
Summary
With the heart, daring, and evocative atmosphere of Winter’s Bone and True Grit, and driven by the raw, whip-smart voice of Percy James, a blistering debut about a fearless sixteen-year old girl whose search for her missing mother leads to an unexpected discovery, and a life or death struggle in the harsh frozen landscape of the Upper Midwest.
As a blizzard bears down, Percy James sets off to find her troubled mother, Carletta. For years, Percy has had to take care of herself and Mama—a woman who’s been unraveling for as long as her daughter can remember. Fearing Carletta is strung out on meth and that she won’t survive the storm, Percy heads for Shelton Potter’s cabin, deep in the woods of Northern Michigan. A two-bit criminal, as incompetent as he his violent, Shelton has been smoking his own cook and grieving the death of his beloved Labrador, Old Bo.
But when Percy arrives, there is no sign of Carletta. Searching the house, she finds Shelton and his girlfriend drugged into oblivion—and a crying baby girl left alone in a freezing room upstairs. From the moment the baby wraps a tiny hand around her finger, Percy knows she must save her—a split-second decision that is the beginning of a dangerous odyssey in which she must battle the elements and evade Shelton and a small band of desperate criminals, hell-bent on getting that baby back.
Knowing she and the child cannot make it alone, Percy seeks help from Carletta’s ex, Portis Dale, who is the closest thing she’s ever had to a father. As the storm breaks and violence erupts, Percy will be forced to confront the haunting nature of her mother’s affliction and finds her own fate tied more and more inextricably to the baby she is determined to save.
Filled with the sweeping sense of cultural and geographic isolation of its setting—the hills of fictional Cutler County in northern Michigan—and told in Percy’s unflinching style, Sweetgirl is an affecting exploration of courage, sacrifice, and the ties that bind—a taut and darkly humorous tour-de-force that is horrifying, tender, and hopeful. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 23, 1976
• Where—Northern Michigan
• Education—B.A., North Central Michigan College and Central Michigan Univerity; M.F.A., University of
North Carolina, Greensboro
• Currently—lives in Durham, North Carolina
Travis Mulhauser was born and raised in Northern Michigan. His novel, Sweetgirl, was long-listed for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, was a Michigan Notable Book Award winner in 2017, an Indie Next Pick, and named one of Ploughshares Best Books of the New Year.
He is also the author of Greetings from Cutler County: A Novella and Stories, published in 2005.
Travis received his MFA in Fiction from UNC-Greensboro and is also a proud graduate of North Central Michigan College and Central Michigan University. He lives currently in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and two children (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[L]ean yet poetic prose.
Popmatters.com
The writing is gorgeous and the stakes rise steadily from the moment Percy first sets out, making this slim novel surprisingly vicious and taut.
Bookriot.com
Sweetgirl works on so many levels, it’s difficult to know how to classify it…hilarious, heartbreaking and true, a major accomplishment from an author who looks certain to have an impressive career ahead of him.
NPR
[Y]ou can’t help but smile at this disarmingly original novel.… Travis Mulhauser traverses a wobbling slack line across a moral crevasse that few of us will experience. Yet there’s a devastating credibility to the events he creates.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
So good that I read a few paragraphs aloud to my podiatrist…. Though meth and drugs infest almost every page, this debut novel is chillingly lyrical and filled with a love so raw and fierce it takes your breath.
Charlotte Observer
[S]mart, taut, and believable writing.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Mulhauser evocatively describes the bleak landscape and starkly degraded social mores of an isolated community after the tourists have departed..… Yet the novel succeeds as a coming-of-age story when Percy, having survived grisly violence and abysmal loss, experiences a realization about how to shape her future.
Publishers Weekly
A self-sufficient 16-year-old girl searches for her meth-addicted parent in the deep woods…. Verdict: Though it never fully escapes the shadow of Woodrell's famous novel [Winter's Bone], this title boasts fine writing and memorable characters. —Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ
Library Journal
Percy, certainly, is an established type. She's wise beyond her years, committed to doing the right thing despite.…the hardships she has endured. And, like every other character in this novel, she speaks with a folksy eloquence that requires strenuous suspension of disbelief.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How did you feel about the book’s title, Sweetgirl, before and after finishing the novel?
2. Much of the novel is told from the perspective of Percy, a teenage girl. How does her relatively young point of view affect what we learn about her surroundings? Did you find her voice convincing?
How would you describe Percy and Portis’s relationship, and how does it change over the course of the novel?
3. How did getting the third-person perspective of Shelton affect the way you thought about him as a character? What did reading Shelton’s perspective do to humanize him for you?
4. The stark landscape and the blizzard become a driving force throughout the course of the novel. In what ways do the characters’ geographical surroundings inform and shape their choices?
5. The book begins with Percy searching for Carletta—yet when she finds her, she decides to leave her in the trailer in order to keep seeking help for Jenna. What do you think her reasoning was? Would you have done the same?
6. There are many instances of violence throughout the course of the novel. What did these passages tell you about life in this community? Did you feel that they were necessary to the plot, and why or why not?
7. How did you feel about Percy’s change of heart by the end of the novel, and her decision to leave? Do you think Percy would have left had Portis still been around?
(Questions from the author's website.)
Heart Spring Mountain
Robin MacArthur, 2018
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062444424
Summary
In this evocative first novel, a young woman returns to her rural Vermont hometown in the wake of a devastating storm to search for her missing mother and unravel a powerful family secret
It’s August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes.
One thousand miles away—while tending bar in New Orleans—Vale receives a call and is told that her mother, Bonnie, has disappeared. Despite a years-long estrangement from Bonnie, Vale drops everything and returns home to look for her.
Though the hometown Vale comes back to is not the one she left eight years earlier, she finds herself falling back into the lives of the family she thought she’d long since left behind. As Vale begins her search, the narrative opens up and pitches back and forth in time to follow three generations of women—a farming widow, a back-to-the-land dreamer, and an owl-loving hermit—as they seek love, bear children, and absorb losses.
All the while, Vale’s search has her unwittingly careening toward a family origin secret more stunning than she ever imagined.
Written with a striking sense of place, Heart Spring Mountain is an arresting novel about returning home, finding hope in the dark, and of the power of the land—and the stories it harbors—to connect and to heal. It’s also an absorbing exploration of the small fractures that can make families break-and the lasting ties that bind them together. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1978 (?)
• Where—Marlboro, Vermont, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., Vermont College of Fine Arts
• Awards—2017 PEN/New England Award-Fiction
• Currently—lives in Marlboro, Vermont
Robin MacArthur is the author of the novel, Heart Spring Mountain (2018), and Half Wild: Stories (winner of the 2017 PEN/New England Award). She grew up on the same farm her grandparents bought in 1950 and on which her parents later built their home. She received her B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
MacArthur married Ty Gibbons, a fellow Vermonter, who writes music for documentary films. The two formed the folk duo, Red Heart the Ticker, and issued a couple of albums. After living in Providence, New York, and Philadelphia, they decided that moving back to Vermont would spur their creative impulses. They built a cabin on their own, including milling their own logs. They've continued to expand it along with their growing family (now two children).
MacArthur is also the editor of Contemporary Vermont Fiction: An Anthology. She has received grants from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. (Adapted from the author's website and from Design Sponge. Retrieved 3/5/2018.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [N]uanced, poetic, and evocative; MacArthur empathetically depicts each of her characters in their wounded but hopeful glory.
Publishers Weekly
Lyrical and faintly political (but never pedantic), Heart Spring Mountain is a timely wonder of a debut.
Shelf Awareness
Powerful.… MacArthur demonstrates a commanding ability to weave meaning from separate narrative threads, exploring how the impact of a person’s choices can echo through generations, even as a storm washes the past away.
Booklist
[O]ccasionally pockmarked with only-in-a-novel dialogue and actions ("Find me!" Vale cries after flinging her clothes off in a rainstorm). But MacArthur ably sustains multiple narrative threads and voices.… A fecund and contemplative feminist family saga.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for HEART SPRING MOUNTAIN … then take off on your own:
1. Heart Spring Mountain considers the extent to which our ancestral past determine many of our actions and beliefs, basically who we are. As Aunt Deb says, our ancestors' lives form "blueprints for how to be in the world." Do you agree? How powerful is our heritage in forming who we are?
2. In the wake of hurricane Irene's devastation, Deb wonders what other natural catastrophes lay in wait for us in the coming years. Vale asks, "what, then, is the cure?" Does the novel provide an answer? Are there cures?
3. Deb comes to Vermont after having lived on a commune and filled with 1970s idealism. Now years later, is that idealism in any way flawed?
4. What does the novel suggest that we owe, if anything, to the land?
5. Were the shifts in time and voice difficult to follow for you? Does the author succeed in weaving together the disparate narratives into a whole?
6. Follow-up to Question 5: Describe the various characters—their quirks, personalities and challenges. Do you have a favorite section or character? Are some more compelling than others?
7. As Vale uncovers some of the family secrets, she wonders whether any of that knowledge, especially the family's Abenaki ancestry, might have made her mother less vulnerable to drugs. What do you think?
8. Consider Robin MacArthur's use of the storm—not just as a plot point but as a metaphor.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Friend
Sigrid Nunez, 2018
Penguin Publishing
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735219441
Summary
WINNER, 2018 National Book Awards-Fiction
A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind.
Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.
While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.
Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1950 ?
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—M.A., Barnard College; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Whiting Award, Rome Prize, Berlin Prize
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Author Sigrid Nunez, daughter of a German mother and a Chinese-Panamanian father, was born and raised in New York City. She received her BA from Barnard College and her MFA from Columbia University.
After finishing school she worked for a time as an editorial assistant at The New York Review of Books. She has taught at Princeton University, Amherst College, Smith College, Columbia University and the New School, and has been a visiting writer at Baruch College, Washington University, Vassar College and the University of California, Irvine, among others. She has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and of several other writers' conferences across the United States. She lives in New York City.
Writing
Nunez is the author of seven novels: A Feather on the Breath of God (1995), Naked Sleeper (1996), Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury (1998), For Rouenna (2001), The Last of Her Kind (2006), Salvation City (2010), and The Friend (2018). Her major concerns as a novelist have been language, memory, identity, class, and writing itself.
In addition to fiction, Nunez is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag (2011).
Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four volumes of Asian American literature. Among the journals she has contributed to are the New York Times, Paris Review, Harper's, McSweeney's, Believer, Threepenny Review, Tin House, and O: The Oprah Magazine.
Recognition
She was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in spring, 2005. Among her other honors are a Whiting Award and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Rome Prize in Literature. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/6/2018 .)
Book Reviews
[D]ry, allusive and charming.… This novel's tone in general …is mournful and resonant. It sheds rosin, like the bow of a cello.… The Friend is thick with quotations and anecdotes from the lives and work of many writers, in a way that can recall the bird's-nest-made-of-citations novels of David Markson. Nunez deals these out deftly; they do not jam her flow. The snap of her sentences sometimes put me in mind of Rachel Cusk.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
The contemplation of writing and the loss of integrity in our literary life form the heart of the novel.… Nunez’s prose itself comforts us. Her confident and direct style uplifts—the music in her sentences, her deep and varied intelligence. She addresses important ideas unpretentiously and offers wisdom for any aspiring writer who, as the narrator fears, may never know this dear, intelligent friend—or this world that is dying. But is it dying? Perhaps. But with The Friend, Nunez provides evidence that, for now, it survives.
New York Times Book Review
With enormous heart and eloquence, Nunez explores cerebral responses to loss.… The Friend exposes an extraordinary reserve of strength waiting to be found in storytelling and unexpected companionship.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
The book is an intimate, beautiful thing, deceptively slight at around 200 pages, but humming with insight… [an] artfully discursive meditation on friendship, love, death, solitude, canine companionship and the life of an aging writer in New York. Far from being heavy going, this novel, written as a letter to the late friend, is peppered with wry observations, particularly those of a writer stuck teaching undergraduates.
Economist (UK)
A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory, what it means to be a writer today, and various forms of love and friendship... Nunez has a wry, withering wit.
NPR
In this slim but pitch-perfect novel, a writer loses her best friend and mentor suddenly without explanation…Wry and moving, The Friend is a love story, a mania story, and a recovery story.
Vanity Fair
A poignant reflection on loss and companionship.
Marie Claire
[A] sneaky gut punch of a novel …a consummate example of the human-animal tale.… The Friend’s tone is dry, clear, direct—which is the surest way to carry off this sort of close-up study of anguish and attachment.
Harper's
A wry riff on Rilke’s idea of love as two solitudes that "protect and border and greet each other."
Vogue
Often as funny as it is thoughtful, The Friend is an elegant meditation on grief, friendship, healing, and the bonds between humans and dogs.
Buzzfeed
[O]ver the course of the rest of the novel, her love for Apollo both consumes and heals [the narrator]. This elegant novel explores both rich memories and … the way … the past is often more vibrant than the present.
Publishers Weekly
This is very much a writer's novel[,] … a slow, poignant meditation on grief, rife with pithy literary myths and quotations. Verdict: Literature nerds, creative writing students, and dog lovers will find this work delightful. —Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA
Library Journal
Nunez offers an often-hilarious, always-penetrating look at writing, grief, and the companionship of dogs.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Quietly brilliant and darkly funny, Nunez's latest novel finds her on familiar turf with an aggressively unsentimental interrogation of grief, writing, and the human-canine bond.… It is a lonely novel: rigorous and stark, so elegant.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start discussion for THE FRIEND … then take off on your own:
1. How is the narrator's love for her friend different from that of a wife, of which he'd had three? For years till his death, even after early affair as student/teacher, the narrator considered him her dearest friend. Why?
2. Talk about the ways in which Apollo provides comfort to the narrator. Consider, for instance, how she describes the fact that "having a huge warm body pressed along the length of your spine is an amazing comfort." What experience with dogs (and cats) have you had in terms of their uncanny ability to recognize our moods and, consciously or not, offer solace?
3. Follow-up to Question 2: How does the narrator comfort Apollo (above and beyond providing food and shelter)?
4. What do you think of the friend, a womanizer who slept with his students, including herself? Were his actions ethical, especially if there is equal attraction? He once said, that "the classroom was the most erotic place in the world. To deny this was puerile." Does he have a point? Why do students fall for teachers? What's the dynamic?
5. Thinking of J.M. Coetzee's character in Disgrace, the narrator wonders about castration as a "fix" for her friend who, with such frequency, engaged in "disgusting...antics of a dirty old man." Any thoughts?
6. Why do her own students disappoint the narrator? What are the views some espouse in their papers?
7. "If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told that it does, it appears that writing takes some away." Why does the narrator feel this way about her fellow writers?
8. There is little in The Friend when it comes to drama; it's primarily a study of character and an exploration of ideas. Would more action have made a difference to you in terms of how you experienced the book? Nunez also includes a large number of quotations and stories from the works of writers. Are they well integrated into the novel? Did you enjoy them … or find them distracting?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Old Drift
Namwali Serpell, 2019
Crown/Archetype
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101907146
Summary
An electrifying debut from the winner of the 2015 Caine Prize for African writing, The Old Drift is the Great Zambian Novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.
On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift.
Here begins the epic story of a small African nation, told by a mysterious swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis.
The tale? A playful panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction. The moral? To err is human.
In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
As the generations pass, their lives—their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes—form a symphony about what it means to be human.
From a woman covered with hair and another plagued with endless tears, to forbidden love affairs and fiery political ones, to homegrown technological marvels like Afronauts, microdrones and viral vaccines—this gripping, unforgettable novel sweeps over the years and the globe, subverting expectations along the way.
Exploding with color and energy, The Old Drift is a testament to our yearning to create and cross borders, and a meditation on the slow, grand passage of time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1980
• Where—Lusaka, Zambia
• Raised—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale; Ph.D., Havard
• Awards—Rona Jaffee Writers' Award; Caine Prize for African Writing
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Carla Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer and academic raised in the US. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, was published in 2019.
Serpell was born in Lusaka, Zambia. Her father, a British-Zambian father was a professor of psychology at the University of Zambia, and her mother an economist. When she was nine, the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in the US. Serpell received her B.A. in literature from Yale and her Ph.D. in American and British fiction at Harvard.
She has lived since 2008 in California, where she is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She returns to Lusaka for visits annually.
In addition to her 2019 novel, The Old Drift, Serbell has been recognized for her short stories. She won the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story, "The Sack." Her first published story, "Muzungu," was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009, shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize, and anthologized in The Uncanny Reader.
In 2014, she was chosen as one of the Africa 39, a Hay Festival project to identify the most promising African writers under 40. In 2011, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. (Adapted from Wikipedia and from the author's website. Retrieved 3/4/2019.)
Book Reviews
It’s hard to believe this is a debut, so assured is its language, so ambitious its reach, and yet The Old Drift is indeed Namwali Serpell’s first novel, and it signifies a great new voice in fiction. Feeling at once ancient and futuristic, The Old Drift is a genre-defying riotous work that spins a startling new creation myth for the African nation of Zambia.… Serpell’s voice is lucid and brilliant, and it’s one we can’t wait to read more of in years to come.
Nylon
★ Recalling the work of Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez as a sometimes magical, sometimes horrifically real portrait of a place, Serpell’s novel goes into the future of the 2020s, when the various plot threads come together in a startling conclusion. Intricately imagined, brilliantly constructed, and staggering in its scope, this is an astonishing novel.
Publishers Weekly
★ Three multicultural families' pasts and presents, told by a swarming chorus of voices, culminate in a tale as mysterious as it is timeless.… This stunning cross-genre debut draws on Zambian history and… reinforces the far-flung exploration of humanity.
Library Journal
★ In this smartly composed epic, magical realism and science fiction interweave with authentic history…. Serpell’s novel is absorbing, occasionally strange, and entrenched in Zambian culture—in all, an unforgettable original.
Booklist
★ Comparisons with Gabriel García Marquez are inevitable and likely warranted. But this novel's generous spirit, sensory richness, and visionary heft make it almost unique among magical realist epics.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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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