4.1
-
637 ratings
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: THE LA TIMES, THE GUARDIAN, AND MORE! • Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romantic tale of young lovers on the lam in 1890s Montana.
"A wedding of Cormac McCarthy with Flann O’Brien; a western but also the most Irish of novels; a tragedy written as farce . . . inspiring joy with every incident, every concept, every sentence."— The Guardian
October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington. A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho, and briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a distant speck on their horizon, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
In this love story for the ages—lyrical, profane and propulsive—Kevin Barry has once again demonstrated himself to be a master stylist, an unrivalled humourist, and a true poet of the human heart.
Kindle
$14.99
Available instantly
Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Hardcover
$22.35
Paperback
$30.00
Ships from
Amazon.com
Payment
Secure transaction
ISBN-10
0593915313
ISBN-13
978-0593915318
Print length
240 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Diversified Publishing
Publication date
July 08, 2024
Dimensions
6.13 x 0.55 x 9.25 inches
Item weight
12.8 ounces
ASIN :
B0CKSNJGPK
File size :
1689 KB
Text-to-speech :
Enabled
Screen reader :
Supported
Enhanced typesetting :
Enabled
X-Ray :
Enabled
Word wise :
Enabled
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LA TIMES, THE GUARDIAN, THE NEW STATESMAN, THE IRISH TIMES, THE JOURNAL, AND THE OBSERVER
“Exhilarating...What starts as a gritty depiction of one man going nowhere soon becomes a gripping tale of two lovers on the run...Both an Irish-flavored western fraught with danger and brutality and a love story filled with caustic humor and pathos....Barry’s signature touches predominate and render the narrative propulsive and immersive.” —The Washington Post
“A rare thing…This short, tight novel pulls one so swiftly along that it can be read in a summer’s afternoon. And then once more, slowly.” —Wall Street Journal “Like its Montana setting, Kevin Barry’s novel is brutal and gorgeous... a sense of foreboding is shot through with dark humour.” —The Economist
“There will be gun battles and knife fights. The moon will rise above dark plateaus and dreams will reach as far as the Pacific coast…Of course in the hands of Kevin Barry it almost doesn’t matter. With language that is somehow both raw and lyrical, the real point is that we ride out to meet our fate.” —The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“A dazzling tale of lovers on the run in Montana . . .A wedding of Cormac McCarthy with Flann O’Brien . . . inspiring joy with every incident, every concept, every sentence.” —The Guardian
"A dazzling tale of lovers on the run in Montana . . . Barry has written us a love story that never seems false or cheap, and an adventure where the violence is never gloating or desensitised. It’s a wedding of Cormac McCarthy with Flann O’Brien; a western but also the most Irish of novels; a tragedy written as farce . . . inspiring joy with every incident, every concept, every sentence." — The Guardian
"All that should be required for you to saddle up and ride hard toward your nearest bookstore on July 9 is this: Kevin Barry does Deadwood...Barry never disappoints, but this one is a pure pleasure. A thrilling, tumescent, poetically vulgar, big-hearted romp of a novel…utterly electrifying." — LitHub
"It takes a sublime artist like Kevin Barry to map the wildest outposts of the human heart. He captures his poet bandit's spirit through language that is consistently original, consistently exhilarating. " —Claire Kilroy
"An absolute belter of a book." —Anne Enright, author of The Gathering
"Rip-roaring...The pleasure never lets up in Barry’s masterful novel." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The Irish writer’s humor and prose magic give the genre’s conventions a refreshing spin…Barry’s fans will be delighted and many a newbie beguiled.” — Kirkus (starred review)
“Rollicking … Barry’s style seems magnificently effortless as Tom and Polly meet some strange and curious characters on their travels, and it seems Barry can make anything compelling. A sterling work of historical fiction and a picaresque love story that is brutal, hilarious, and fabulously entertaining.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Holy damn, it’s good.” —David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas
“Barry’s sentences dazzle like lightning strikes yet he is equally gifted as a storyteller. Humorous, though ultimately profoundly moving, The Heart in Winter further confirms Barry’s place as one of our greatest contemporary writers. –Ron Rash, author of Serena
“Another bloody brilliant little symphony from Kevin Barry” —Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers
“I was spellbound…Funny, brutal, romantic and cinematic.” —The Bookseller
"A sterling work of historical fiction and a picaresque love story that is brutal, hilarious, and fabulously entertaining." — Booklist (starred review)
‘Wondrous and bold. I'm in awe of Kevin Barry and endlessly inspired by his work’ —Lisa McInerney, author of The Rules of Revelation
"Kevin Barry lights out for the territory and once again comes back with a shining nugget of gold. The Heart in Winter is a glorious and haunted yarn, with all the elements – the doomed lovers, the bounty hunters, the knife-fights and whisky-soaked songs – brought to mysterious life by the heft and polish of the Barry sentence. Marvelous." — Jon McGregor, author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
"A haunting, hypnotic love story of two damaged souls. Barry's talent is breath-taking—he is a true original and, once again, words obey his call. This is a propulsive read from a writer at the height of his powers." — Mary Costello, author of Academy Street
“[B]y turns funny and tragic, full of typically outrageous figures and sublime writing.” — The Observer
“Barry’s voice…propels us through [his] work, through paragraphs punctuated by turns of phrase that deliver little jolts of pleasure.” — Francine Prose, author of A Changed Man
Read more
Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of three collections of short stories and three novels. City of Bohane was the winner of the 2013 International Dublin Literary Award. Beatlebone (2015) won the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize and is one of seven books by Irish authors nominated for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award, the world's most valuable annual literary fiction prize for books published in English. His 2019 novel Night Boat to Tangier was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. Barry is also an editor of Winter Papers, an arts and culture annual.
Read more
Customer reviews
4.1 out of 5
637 global ratings
adlib
5
High end phrase factory
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2024
Verified Purchase
I could read Kevin Barry describe grass growing. He repurposes words into sentences that crackle like well delivered punch lines. He doesn't describe his characters so much as let you watch them and listen to them as they roll and tumble through their turmoiled existence.
4 people found this helpful
Alexis
5
Beautiful writing
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2024
Verified Purchase
Kevin Barry writing is magnificent and beautiful. I found this different from his other books in the specificity of the narrative, but with all the languid incredible language intact.
Michael Burke
5
At This Moment His Heart Turned
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2024
“A western, with Irish accents,” is how Kevin Barry described his new novel, “The Heart in Winter.” In tone and setting, you can think the HBO series “Deadwood,” although told from a pair of young lovers' hearts rather than saloon owners or lawmen. This is 1891 wild west Butte, Montana, a town where 10,000 men have immigrated from Cork, Ireland to find work in the copper mines. Tough and gritty times.
A rough young degenerate poet, Tom Rourke, is spending his days drenched in alcohol and opium, unsure whether to leave town or just end things altogether. He is earning a few bucks assisting a photographer when a newly married couple come in for a portrait. Tom is floored by the bride, Polly Gillespie, and the world pinwheeled.
“...she got a portrait done and that boy was looking at her so hard it was like he just discovered eyes.”
Instantly in love, there is nothing to do but cast their fate to the wind. Tom robs a brothel, sets fire to it to cover his tracks, and the two of them journey headlong into Montana’s wilderness with only the vaguest of notions how to survive a trek to San Francisco.
Kevin Barry writes like no one else. Paragraphs may be pages long, but it flows smoothly as the poetry, the dialogue, and the humor are just the slightest bit off expectations– it all blends together and creates an odd but authentic world. Tom and Polly are unforgettable characters, too– naive lovers who have gone all in– shrugging off the knowledge that there will probably be consequences to their blind faith. They speak of death often– more of its inevitability than its threat.
I mentioned the TV series Deadwood. That is probably a good barometer if you are unsure if this is your type of reading. The violence, raw humor, and multisyllabic array of curse words will be triggers to some. “Heart in Winter” also shares many of that show’s treasures, as well.
While approaching this book with some optimism, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Ready for a western adventure, I was enchanted by the prose and the world Kevin Barry conjured. I was probably most impressed with how Tom Rourke began as such an unlikeable stain, only to develop into such a fascinating character over the course of time.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Read more
5 people found this helpful
EE
5
An Immersive New Western
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2024
Thank you to NetGalley and to Doubleday Books for the ARC of The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry.
Wow, what a cover! Minimalist and eye-catching - it wasn't until after I read the synopsis that I recognized Barry for Night Boat to Tangier which I read a few years back.
It took me about 10-15 minutes of reading to catch on to Barry's prose in The Heart in Winter - something I also remember having to with Night Boat to Tangier - his writing style is very immersive to the topic and it drops you right into a location where the reader has to quickly right themselves to understand the layered meaning of the story. Once into the second chapter focused from Polly's perspective everything felt aligned prose wise. If anyone briefly struggles, stick with it!
Tom Rourke, one of our main characters, writes letters for the men of Butte to help them bring women to the west to marry. One of the women Tom writes to is Polly Gillespie, and within 48hours of her arriving to Butte and marrying the mining captain Long Anthony Harrington, she and Tom begin an emotional and physical affair. Within a few weeks they have made a slapdash plan to steal money and a horse while creating a town-wide distraction to sneak away to the west. When Harrington realizes what has happened, he hires a gang of men to bring Polly back to him. This is where the action begins and we ride along with perspectives from Tom, Polly, and the other players to the end.
Barry's books are concise but every single word and sentence lends to the story. Because of this he has a depth of character building and plot development that flows quickly, but it never feels forced or accidental. We know from the first five pages what a mess Tom Rourke is - suicidal, heavy drinker, opium user, pays for sex, mostly broke, a bit of an insomniac, poet/writer of love letters, etc. In the town he is an accepted scamp - it is recognized he is incapable of being a miner and that he doesn't pay his debts and he avoids the other Irishmen of the town and he is more or less nonviolent. Polly is not just a woman looking for a husband, she's looking to escape her past and recognizing that a woman of 32 has few options in the world - pretending to be younger and virginal for the captain is a simple escape. Together Tom and Polly are a lovely disaster trying their best to make it in the wild west - even knowing their flaws, it's still so easy to root for them.
The backdrop of the west in this time period is well displayed and thought out. The array of cultures and the efforts toward national expansion in the effort to achieve manifest destiny and the American dream highlight the true struggle of finding a new home and being treated equally as fellow townsfolk/fortune seekers/survivors.
The story also contains some of the pivotal elements of westerns - the wilderness, the settlers, outlaws, bounty hunters, and questions or morality and justice - all told from a more nuanced perspective. It is a fine addition to the genre.
Read more
Patrican
4
Some thrilling sentences. Overall, entertaining enough.
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2024
Especially in the first 100 pages Barry displays an uncanny ability to surprise with a spot-on sentence of real, the last thing you were expecting, but perfect, inevitable, once you've seen it. By all rights, the story should be zany, but it's real people, doing and saying real things. It reminds me of Denis Johnson.
But, after successfully matching Hansel with Gretel, and motivating them into the Gingerbread House, Barry foregoes the bother of “plot” in favor of more and more poetic philosophical ambience. It’s no longer real people doing real things; developments are unmotivated, implausible, beyond Deus ex Machina-- more like A Thousand and One Nights. The cutesy-quaint bog Irish gets a bit precious in the processing.
Nonetheless, it’s a quick read, and memorable enough. What Graham Greene would call an "entertainment”.
Read more
4.2
-
100,022
$8.39
4.3
-
155,575
$6.33
4.6
-
140,302
$13.49
4.3
-
88,556
$9.59
4.4
-
94,890
$11.66
4.3
-
154,085
$2.99
4.3
-
143,196
$9.47
4.1
-
80,003
$13.48
4.3
-
54,062
$14.99
4.4
-
59,745
$16.19
4.2
-
107,613
$8.99
4.4
-
94,673
$8.53