About the Book
What if we ride out tonight? What if we ride out and never once look back?
October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city 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 balladmaker, 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 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. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .
Format: Hardcover (224 pages) Publisher: Canongate
Publication date: 6th June 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction
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My Review
I first saw mention of The Heart in Winter in the preview of upcoming books posted by Susan at A Life in Books so it’s thanks to her that not only have I been introduced to a brilliant book but also to a new author whose other work I will definitely explore. Truly this is a golden age for Irish writing.
To inhabit Butte, Montana in 1891 is to live in a place where violence and lawlessness is rife. Many immigrants have been drawn to the town – from Ireland, Cornwall, Wales and beyond – by the prospect of work in the area’s copper mines, or maybe even of striking it rich themselves. It’s a tough life and for many the only way to get through it is with alcohol or drugs supplied by Chinese traders, known as Celestials.
Tom Rourke is a drifter, drunk and opium addict who ekes out a living writing songs, love letters for illiterate miners hoping to attract a bride, and assisting in a photographic studio. It’s how he meets Polly Gillespie, the new bride of mine captain, Anthony Harrington. Polly has her own troubled past and soon discovers her new life as Harrington’s wife is going to bring neither happiness nor fulfilment. There’s a kind of tragic inevitability that Tom and Polly – both flawed, damaged individuals – will be drawn to each other. In fact, Tom has always himself believed he won’t make a good end – ‘What he reckons is you was born to a dark star’ – and has thought about hastening that end. Polly is a survivor, someone who can reinvent herself – and has done. She perhaps comes closest to being her true self with Tom.
In the hands of the author the landscape of 19th century Montana is simultaneously unforgiving but full of beauty. ‘Winter by now was truly the sour landlord of the forest.’ The characters leap off the page whether that’s the fanatically religious Harrington, punishing himself for his own lustful thoughts, or Jago Marrak, a giant of a man and the leader of the trio hired to track down the runaways. There are passages of wonderful prose such as in the chapter entitled ‘Nightmusic’.
‘About this time it became the common perception that trains sounded lonesome, especially in the hours of darkness, and you could not deny it looking across the yards at Pocatello Junction on that rainy December night as the Utah & Northern went out for Salt Lake City and left a long forlorn calling in its wake. The rain came slantwise and harder now across the sheds and the yards and the depot.. There was the distant roll of a piano line as it played in counterpoint to the night train’s fading call. There was some distant jeering also. The quartermoon climbed by slow degrees through the cloudbank to add to the night’s yearnful air and still the beating of the rain came down on the cars of the resting stock and somewhere in the town the jags of a woman’s screeching were cut short.’
The Heart in Winter is a enthralling, skilfully crafted combination of love story and adventure story. I was completely captivated by Tom and Polly’s story which, although you suspect is doomed from the start, you can’t help hoping will turn out differently. ‘…And wasn’t it a remarkable turn of events that showed love and death they co-exist in our violent and sentimental world. They might even depend one on the other.’
I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Canongate via NetGalley.
In three words: Moving, lyrical, immersive
Try something similar: Run to the Western Shore by Tim Leach
About the Author
Kevin Barry is the author of four novels and three story collections. His awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award. His stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere. His novel, Night Boat to Tangier, was an Irish number one bestseller, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter, and he lives in County Sligo, Ireland.
