The Coming of Winter (New Canadian Library) [Mass Market Paperback]

David Adams Richards (Author), Rick Hillis (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1992 | Series: New Canadian Library

David Adams Richards finds universal truths in the very particular setting of New Brunswick’s Miramichi Valley. This, his first novel, provides a window upon a world that is as unsettling, as uncontrollable, and as inescapably authentic as a sudden brawl.

The frustrations of the community are brought into focus in the plights of 20-year-old Kevin Dulse, his family, and especially his wild young friends. An intensely realistic story, it stands firm upon its engaging, unaffected characters and the raw talent of its then 22-year-old author.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

David Adams Richards finds universal truths in the very particular setting of New Brunswick's Miramichi Valley. This, his first novel, provides a window upon a world that is as unsettling, as uncontrollable, and as inescapably authentic as a sudden brawl.

The frustrations of the community are brought into focus in the plights of 20-year-old Kevin Dulse, his family, and especially his wild young friends. An intensely realistic story, it stands firm upon its engaging, unaffected characters and the raw talent of its then 22-year-old author.

About the Author

David Adams Richards was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick, in 1950. He has published ten acclaimed novels, including the award-winning Miramichi trilogy – Nights Below Station Street, winner of the 1988 Governor General’s Award; Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (1990), winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award; and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (1993), winner of the Thomas Raddall Award – Hope in the Desperate Hour (1996), The Bay of Love and Sorrows (1998), and, most recently, Mercy Among the Children (2000), co-winner of the prestigious Giller Prize. In 1993, Richards received the Canada-Australia Prize.

Richards has also published three non-fiction books, most recently the Governor General’s Award-winning fishing memoir Lines on the Water (1998), and has written Gemini Award-winning screenplays for the CBC-TV adaptations of his novels For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down and Nights Below Station Street. “Small Gifts,” his original screenplay for CBC-TV, won a Gemini Award and the New York International Film Festival Award for Best Script.

Richards now lives in Toronto with his wife, Peggy, and their two sons.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: New Canadian Library (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0771098855
• ISBN-13: 978-0771098857
• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 0.7 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,824,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An impressive debut, October 18, 2002

By 

Charlotte Vale-Allen (CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Coming of Winter (New Canadian Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

After reading the author's most recent work, followed by one somewhere in the middle, it was intriguing to read Richards' first novel. Written, amazingly, when he was only 23, The Coming of Winter foreshadows the splendid writer Richards has come to be.

This first of his New Brunswick (Canada, not New Jersey) novels is a potently quiet tale of a clutch of near-silent, deeply brooding people. At the apex is young Kevin Dulse, whose twenty-first birthday and marriage are approaching within two weeks' time. As are all the characters, Kevin's inner life is deftly depicted in all of its inchoate anger, integrity and confusion. The men in this book all have active lives of the mind but seem congenitally unable to articulate their thoughts and feelings. The women are only slightly more adept at expressing themselves.

What makes the novel so readable is the exquisitely observed minutiae of everyday life in a small town whose major employer is the mill. Kevin's observations while working a number of jobs at the mill, his determination to do even the lowliest job thoroughly and well, make him entirely human and sympathetic. His inability not to go out drinking with his friends is annoying--to him and to the reader--and yet he cannot stop himself.

In the course of the two weeks covered by the novel, Kevin takes any number of steps forward into maturity, into adulthood. The details of his mother's efforts to prepare for her son's wedding with only a week's notice are beautifully realized and touchingly real.

A quiet book with considerable subtext, my only complaint (and this is primarily an editorial flaw) is the shifting from one character to another without indication of which character is in focus. It makes for confusion as one shifts about, trying to glean from the text just who is holding center stage at a given moment. This is, otherwise, a remarkable achievement for the very young author. And his subsequent books demonstrate how wonderfully well Richards has developed as a writer. I've yet to find any one of his many novels less than fascinating.
Highly recommended.