Customer Reviews

Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories (P.S.)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Love Begins in Winter" is a memorable book. The stories are sweet and possess underling truth. Several times I became afraid they might drift off to maudlin but they do not. They are purposeful, tie together and succeed beautifully. Simon van Booy has a gift for observation and there are at least 100 sentences in this book that I could read over and over again. He is a romantic, but one who feels and writes as deeply as he does from knowing both personal loss and growing wonder. He is both wise and hopeful. I look forward to his next book.

In these five stories, author Simon Van Booy speaks
in a clairvoyant voice and a singular style that obscures
the line between fiction and poetry. His dexterity with language
is so fluid that it summons images of an acrobat flipping
nouns and verbs rather than body parts.
A series of mellifluous daydreams, the collection traverses
time and space exploring the inner lives of individuals who
long for lost love. From Bruno Bonnet, a celebrated cellist performing
in Quebec, who continues to be enchanted by a childhood sweetheart
to George Frack, a down-trodden office worker, who travels to Sweden
to meet the daughter he has just discovered, the characters steal
your heart and take your breath away.

At first, I was simply attracted by the feel in the hand of this beautifully-produced slim paperback. Then, perhaps because I too am a musician, by the situation on the first page: a cellist waits backstage in a Quebec concert hall to perform a recital: "My name is Bruno Bonnet. The curtain I stand behind is the color of a plum. The velvet is heavy. My life is on the other side. Sometimes I wish it would continue on without me." After the concert, Bruno will walk the empty snow-covered city streets for the rest of the night; it is one of many striking conjunctions of people and places that have such powerful effect throughout the five stories in the book. I might also cite the American businessman weeping like a child in St. Peter's Square in Rome, a little boy sitting on a wall in Las Vegas while his stepfather gambles inside, a lovesick Romany on the West coast of Ireland gazing over to an imagined America, or a desolate man wandering through the almost empty zoo in wintry Stockholm. Van Booy writes in the P.S. section how he often gets inspiration simply by traveling somewhere and walking alone. It works.

But then there is his style. You could see it already in the passage I quoted above -- short declarative sentences with little to wash them down. Here is a longer extract: "My hotel room overlooks the St. Lawrence River. Chunks of ice slip by with the current. Quebec women once set out hard rods of corn on planks of wood on the river's bank. I can see their cotton-white breath and their gray teeth as glimmering fish are spread across barrels. Their aprons are wet. Frost has dusted white the rich brown earth. The ground is hard as stone. Cold has cracked their hands. They laugh and wave to children on small boats drifting. Clouds churn in the eyes of the fish." A poetic imagination, certainly, but the language in which it is expressed is dry as ashes.

And yet, and yet.... Somehow, out of the ashes, Van Booy can conjure love -- despite the style, perhaps even because of the style. All five stories here involve people finding new life amid desolation. All of them also span more than one generation. The cellist, haunted by the memory of a playmate killed in childhood, meets a woman scarred by the horrible death of her beloved brother. The little boy in Las Vegas, befriended by a casino gondolier, grows up to accept the losses of his youth. The Romany, no longer lovesick, comes to America, although his story takes a quite different turn from what he might have expected. The sad man in Stockholm finds an unexpected joy. The pattern for all the stories is set by the novella that gives its apt title to the book, "Love Begins in Winter." But Van Booy succeeds best in the shorter tales, where the ashes are sparser and love has more hope. The fourth of them especially, "The Coming and Going of Strangers," is a little miracle.

Some of the most beautiful short stories I've read in a long time. This collection is not very long but each of the five stories packs an emotional wallop and has definitely stuck in my mind more than a week after finishing the book. As you can tell from the title, each of these stories has to do with love--and each approaches the subject from a different angle. I've never read anything that Simon Van Booy has written but I'm definitely going to find his other book now. If you like short stories, I'd encourage you to read this book. It will make you look at love--and those you love--in a whole new light. One of the best books I read in 2009.

This turned out to be a wonderful collection of uplifting stories about love, forgiveness, romance, family and hope. Each short story contained a character that had either given up hope or was at a crossroads in their life and had to make a decision or take a leap of faith or sometimes just open their eyes to see the love that was all around them and in some cases had been all along. They were all written wonderfully, very literary and lyrical with wonderful twists and turns that were at once completely surprising and then after some thought completely expected.

My favorite story in the collection would have to be the title piece "Love Begins in Winter". It was about two people who had each experienced a great loss in their life and who had only been existing in the years since as they dealt with the blow of it. Only to find at the end of it that they were still alive, that there were others that understood them and that life still went on and they could go on with it.

The one I didn't like, and the story that caused this book to lose a star, was the story "Tiger, Tiger". Mainly about a woman who loved a man but found they wanted to be together but remain unmarried for a variety of reasons culminated in his parent's failed marriage. The story talks about the work of a doctor who shared his experiences treating children who wanted to share their love with their parents in various forms of play. It also talks about how she plays by biting a boy she likes as a child so hard he bleeds and closes with her doing the same to her lover and causing him subsequently to drive off the road and into a ditch. I didn't understand that one at all.

The rest of the stories were wonderful to read about and talked about the pain and pleasure of love of all sorts, familial, romantic and friendship. It talks about the pain of loss and unfaithfulness, about forgiveness and healing, and about making all sorts of relationships work across all sorts of different family combinations and situations in life. Life is messy, and this book doesn't attempt to pretty it up and tie it with a nice little bow. It shows it for what it is and makes the love to be found there beautiful because of it.

"Love Begins in Winter". Concert cellist Brunno is a loner who never moved past his sister's death; Hannah is a shop owner who never moved past her brother's death. Neither normally would make the first move yet this couple both make the first move when they meet in Beverly Hills.

"Tiger, Tiger". In her thirties, her boyfriend's parents insist on meeting her. A pediatrician she is indifferent so she goes out to the Hamptons where Alan and Jennifer welcome her. However, in spite of eighteen months with Brian, she finds herself attracted to and fascinated by his mother until Dorothy takes a bite.

"The Missing Statues". In St. Peter's Square, Max the diplomat cries as he knows how far he has come from his childhood growing without a father up in the sordid hidden side of Las Vegas; yet part of his tears are his way of thanking the person who gave him the courage to move on and up.

"The Coming and Going of Strangers". The Irish gypsy saves the orphan Canadian child's life. Two decades later his son watches from a distance keeping her safe even as he loves her.

"The City of Windy Trees". The letter shook George to the core. Chomping on Raisinets while sitting on his toilet, he ponders going from New York to meet his daughter in Sweden.

These are five well written relationship dramas starring fully developed couples in each. The entries are fun to read, but suggest spread them out over a week or so even though the collection can easily be read in a night; by doing one say every two days, the protagonist remains front and center rather than the late gripping spin that the reader will expect by "The Missing Statues". LOVE BEGINS IN WINTER is an enjoyable reflective anthology.

Harriet Klausner

Stream of consciousness writing. Depressing, almost morose. Life just happens and the writer,or central character doesn't take action or resoponsiblity for making his life. I only got to about page 75 or so before I gave up.

Von Booy's use of language managed to engage me in a way in which I was immediately empathetic to the narrator. The stories are beautiful and tragic just like life. This book reminded me why I love story and why I write.

There is nothing so beautiful as a work of art that shines its light upon the world in such a way that magnifies the grace of human beings whose hearts and minds are born in love. These stories exemplify the very nature of men, women, and children as we are; vulnerable, imaginative, passionate, and on occasion, miraculous. The rich language and elegant structure of the book are simply profound. If angels wrote this well heaven would be out of messengers and the dominion of publishing saved.