Nine Below Zero [Hardcover]

Kevin Canty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 19, 1999

From the acclaimed author of A Stranger in this World and Into the Great Wide Open comes a novel that explores reckless love and penetrates the unrelenting winter landscape of the American West.

Marvin Deernose, a Native American carpenter and recovering alcoholic, has just returned to his Montana hometown with hopes of finding a new start.  Early one snowy morning, Marvin notices an overturned Cadillac down an embankment.  After rescuing the elderly Senator Henry Neihart, who has just suffered a stroke,  Marvin is invited to the Senator's estate where he is immediately drawn to Justine Gallego, the Senator's wayward, unhappily married granddaughter.  As these tarnished souls recognize their profound, shared attraction, they dive headlong into a dangerous and intense affair that forever alters the course of their lives.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

No one can accuse Kevin Canty of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. In his first novel, Into the Great Wide Open, he put his young lovers on a slow train to heartache; in his second, Nine Below Zero, the train derails entirely. The protagonist here is Marvin Deernose, a Native American fighting a powerful appetite for alcohol and drugs. While driving on a snowy Montana road one morning, Marvin comes across a car wreck and rescues the occupant--elderly Senator Henry Neihart. But this act of kindness only puts Marvin in harm's way as he becomes embroiled in the old man's tangled familial relations, and involved with his emotionally damaged granddaughter, Justine.

As Canty writes it, the love affair between poor, broken Justine and self-destructive Marvin is as unavoidable as it is tragic, and both characters know it. "He felt a small, sharp stab of guilt. Not only that he was fucking this rich girl, bad enough, but he was tearing himself down at the same time. When you know a thing isn't right and you do it anyway, pretending. He felt himself thin out." In the author's universe, his characters have free will, but generally make the wrong choices anyway. Dark as Nine Below Zero may be, Canty's powerful writing and multifaceted characters make it a compelling read. --Alix Wilber

From Publishers Weekly

Having charted the dangerous waters of teenage love in his first novel, Into the Great Wide Open, Canty navigates the more treacherous rivers of midlife romance in this story of an unlikely and destructive coupling. Separated from his heroin-addicted wife, as well as from his adolescent daughter, Marvin Deernose (who is half Indian) has returned to Rivulet, Mont., where he lived as a child. Although life isn't perfect in Montana, Marvin hasn't yet made a mess of his own when, one frigid pre-dawn, he comes upon former U.S. Senator Henry Neihart in his overturned car. Still conscious, the senator extracts a promise that Marvin knows will bring him nothing but trouble. When Marie falls in love with the senator's granddaughter, Justine Gallego, still inconsolable over the death of her son four years earlier, their affair removes them from those who need their attention and drives both toward danger. In Marvin, Canty has created an engaging character whose missteps are only too forgivable. But it's far more difficult to forgive Justine's self-destructiveness, despite her son's death and her self-awareness. Canty's prose soars in the small moments, as when Justine remembers how her son's life filled her own or when Marvin recalls hunting with his father. Yet, while there are these moments of incandescent writing, and certain minor characters spring alive through adroit dialogue, the ending may leave the reader underwhelmed, as though, after all the sturm und drang, there's little consequence in what the characters have endured. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese; 1ST edition (January 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385491603
• ISBN-13: 978-0385491600
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,246,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Canty is a God of Fiction!, March 19, 2001

By 

"gardini23" (DeKalb, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nine Below Zero (Paperback)

I love Kevin Canty's work. He is my favorite author and I can't wait for him to write another book (of course his new collection is due out very soon!). This book, however, isn't for everyone. There are twists and turns of plot, but the main topic of this novel is the struggle within the main characters. Canty has a way with manipulating the psyches of depressed and lonely people; he has a unique ability to show the deepness and complexity of human emotion like no other writer that is alive today. If you have never read Kevin before I suggest you read his other novel first (Into The Great Wide Open, or evenn better, read his short story collection, A Stranger In This World, that is the best book I own!!), simply because this book is a lot to handle if you don't know what to expect. You should expect long narrative sequences that dive into the minds of the characters. No thought is left out, EVERYTHING is thought about and with complete honesty, something that is hard to find nowadays. I am at a loss for words to describe this book. Usually in modern fiction there is no more to learn than a moral lesson or a cleverly disguised metaphor, but by reading Canty I have again seen the core of human emotion; I have relearned how people see each other and how they think. BEST BOOK YOU WILL READ by a modern American author. BUY IT!!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh, my God did I love this book, November 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Nine Below Zero (Paperback)

Oh, Kevin Canty is sad. At least his books are sad and I like them that way. In this book his characters cannot get out of their own heads. Although they try, although they are suffering, they cannot help themselves. This is why the elements of cold--nine below zero in Montana--are so striking. The physical reality of the book is in sharp contrast to the inner workings of the characters. This book is like needles and ice and all that is stupid and beautiful at the same time. If you haven't read Canty before, read him. You will love it, I think.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Canty is never a dull read., June 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nine Below Zero (Hardcover)

Kevin Canty has a gift for developing complex characters. This book is in many ways an expansion of his remarkable short stories in A Stranger in This World. Seemingly simple characters become more and more complex with every wrong decision that is made, involving the reader in their increasingly desperate situations.