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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"We Are One", August 1, 2009
When I finished Wayne Courtois' very well-written A REPORT FROM WINTER-- a beautiful title with at least two meanings--his memoir about returning to Portland, Maine, after an absence of ten years, to the beside of his dying mother Jennie, I was astonished at his brutal honesty and wondered if his brother Bruce and his Aunt Louise will read it for he takes no prisoners. If this were fiction, he could always say these characters were composites; but he doesn't have that defense here. Mr. Courtois describes his brother Bruce-- since both men are gay, it must have had something to do with the long cold Maine winters-- as a "fifty-year-old man trying to look thirty. As they say in show business, it was time to retire the act." Even Aunt Louise, portrayed as a great complainer, says that Bruce "doesn't want anything." I was strangely moved, however, when she lied to the funeral home director and gave her sister Jennie a high school diploma when she only finished the sixth grade.
Mr. Courtois holds the mirror up to himself as well, recalling his basically miserable childhood, pretty much because of his mother's hatred of him so that he grew up filled with self-loathing to the point that he attempted suicide in his twenties. (He is forty-three when he mother dies.) On the other hand, it is difficult to completely despise his mother since her father, wearing steel-toed shoes, once kicked her, when she was just a young girl, up a flight of stairs, one step at a time.
The good news is that Mr. Courtois miraculously turned out to be a decent and apparently normal person in spite of his childhood-- although we, according to Freud, never completely outgrow our parents-- and has been in an enviable, relationship of nine years with his partner Ralph when his mother dies. "We are one." The writer contrasts time after time his warm, loving relationship with Ralph with his cold, dysfunctional family in Maine.
The parallels between this writer's experience and mine are eerie. I too a couple of Januarys ago in a nursing home sat at the bedside of my comatose, dying mother. She also had been uncomfortable discussing my sexual orientation although she, unlike Mr. Courtois' mother, loved me madly every day of my life and always told me so. The guilt of not doing enough and not visiting your mother often sounded all too familiar. There was also an attendant in the nursing home who had all the kindness that the nurse April showed to Courtois in his time of great need. His description of the visit to his mother's home after she died and his going through her personal effects-- he finds that she has kept every piece of paper that she ever got her hands on-- almost made my eyes burn. Finally I have spent enough time around Portland to understand what a Maine winter feels like that Mr. Courtois decribes in such bone-chilling detail.
Two scenes stand out for me in this well-crafted memoir that is so lacking in self-pity and that goes straight to the heart. Mr. Courtois recalls delicously what both his mother and aunt always really meant when asked if they had a preference for a restaurant. They always responded that they didn't care; but just as soon as they were seated in the restaurant that he had chosen, they of course started complaining about everything: the food, the service, the draft in the room, their seats (too close to the kitchen) the dirty silverware, etc. (And I had thought that this was uniquely a Southern character trait.)
The second scene is Courtois' telling of his first date with Ralph, whose fine manners make him sexier than a centerfold. The uncertainty, the testing of the water by two men who are real people, not particularly tall with a few extra inches each around their waists, remind us that the world is full of gay people who are not lantern-jawed, tall and with bulging muscles-- a spendid dose of reality.
This really first class memoir, so honest and so rich in detail, reminded me of my favorite gay memoir ever, the Australian writer Timothy Conigrave's poignant HOLDING THE MAN, no small compliment.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Two versions of "Family", September 28, 2009
'A Report From Winter' by Wayne Courtois is a testament to the triumph of love over the unbearable. Weaving events from a dysfunctional past with the reality of a brutal winter, tempered by the support of a loved one, Mr. Courtois has crafted a narrative that is both spellbinding and moving. It also brings to the reader's attention of what family really means. The family one makes from oneself is not necessarily the family one is born into. With his partner's support Mr. Courtois bravely deals with the ghosts from his past, moving beyond them. A book worth reading.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Rich Memoir, October 10, 2009
There's a freedom to reviewing a memoir that one seldom gets when reviewing fiction. On one hand, both narrative fiction and memoir can be held to the same standard when it comes to fluidity of prose, voice and style. On the other hand, one can't apply the same standard when it comes to character arcs or "plot," because in memoir, the author doesn't have the luxury of instructing the characters to grow and change, to do his bidding. These are real people being depicted here; not fictional constructs, and as we all know, real life is seldom as neat and tidy as the fictional world. Some people don't grow and change. Some moments aren't satisfying, all wrapped up in a little bow or a happily-ever-after, and rose colored glasses don't always work. So how does one go about reviewing a memoir?
For me, I have to look at it from two perspectives: does the author have a narrative style that draws the reader in, wraps him or her up in the lives he/she is spying in on, and does the writer strike emotional resonance with the reader, a universality in which a reader-no matter their orientation-can see him or herself? On both of these fronts, author Wayne Courtois excels in just about every way.
A Report from Winter is an introspective memoir, the author returning home to Maine and hints of a childhood that was hardly warm and inviting. As such, much of the narrative takes place in the narrator's head, his observations and emotional reactions to a place and a feeling he'd long left behind taking center stage. He's returning for the death of a parent, one of the quintessential defining moments in any adult's life. It is that moment when childhood disappears forever, and Courtois captures with amazing clarity all the emotions that run though a person when they face this massive change.
Courtois' voice and prose are wonderfully accessible, drawing the reader in with an easy style that has warmth and subtle humor. This is counterbalanced sharply by his attention to detail when it comes to creating for his readers the cold, harsh winter about him, a metaphor for the brittle childhood he experienced, one nearly devoid of love and the heart one wants every child to experience. The author's use of limited flashbacks combined with his attention to detail with respect to the winter setting gives you the perfect picture of what life might have been like for the author while growing up, and he does this wonderfully, never resorting to a litany of who did what to whom. He gives us the broad strokes and anyone who has ever dealt with the passing of an emotionally distant parent will understand and feel every moment of that childhood, even though it may be very different than their own.
And yet, Courtois gives us glimmers of the love trying to break through that emotional permafrost of his family. They are brief, and perhaps they are only the longing perspective of a child grasping ant anything that could be taken for affection, but they are emotionally powerful glimpses.
Likewise, Courtois manages to paint pictures of his family with perfectly tuned phrases that tell us more about those people than long scenes of domestic drama ever could. This is especially important when you are dealing with people who are no longer with us in the traditional narrative sense. Though the author's father is not really a central "character" as the memoir unfold, Courtois lets us know exactly who he was in a refreshingly spare way: "My father didn't say anything. He secretly disliked Louise, but it was the kind of secret you could practically trip over." And when it comes to the author's mother, Jennie, who is bedridden and unable to speak, Courtois also paints a vivid picture. "Yes, there was my mother, carrying on in a low voice, spitting out grudges like watermelon seeds."
Despite all this, we feel the author's need to find something positive in his family, the desire for closure and approval as a major chapter of his life ends. Courtois captures the mixed emotions of such a time: the bitterness from holding on to a past, the longing for closure, the guilt for staying away so long, the claustrophobia of remembering why you left in the first place. It is here the memoir excel the most, crossing wonderfully from the story of one man's family, into a universal story that has emotional depth and resonance.
If there is one qualm I have with the book is that while the POV remaining entrenched in the author's thoughts works brilliantly when addressing the past and family, I did long for it to open up a bit when the author's partner, Ralph, arrives on the scene. I wanted the introspection to ease a bit so that I could get to know who Ralph was, especially in relation to the author. We certainly get close to that at times. The chapter where the author recounts their first date is wonderfully truthful, hope and potential love peeking out. It also has a light humor to it that really makes you want to know these two people as a couple. But while we see glimpses of it, I never really felt that I knew Ralph and never quite saw exactly what he brought into the author's life. I certainly know what I have been told by the author, but because the narrative remains entrenched in introspection, I never get shown who they are together. And I wanted to see that, feel the spring that Ralph brought into the author's life.
But in the end, Courtois has taken a piece of his life, let us glimpse in, and built a world that is full and truthful, one that will feel familiar to many. With humor, wit and sharp prose, he builds a family, dissects it and holds it up for examination. He never gilds the lily and the result is an honesty that has depth and resonance for the reader. Does he tie it up in rosy endings? No. But he doesn't need to. Life can be messy and feel unresolved at times, because, as author Courtois shows us, you really can't go home again...but sometimes that is not a bad thing.
Originally reviewed for Uniquely Plesurable.
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