The Heart in Winter: A Novel

The Heart in Winter: A Novel

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR FROM THE ECONOMIST AND THE MINNESOTA STAR TRIBUNE • Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romantic tale of young lovers on the lam in 1890s Montana. “An absolute belter of a book!” – Anne Enright "A wedding of Cormac McCarthy with Flann O’Brien; a western but also the most Irish of novels; a tragedy written as farce . . . inspiring joy with every incident, every concept, every sentence." — The Guardian October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana 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 ballad-maker of the town, 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 extremely 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, and briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a distant speck on their horizon, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives. In this love story for the ages—lyrical, profane and propulsive—Kevin Barry has once again demonstrated himself to be a master stylist, an unrivalled humorist, and a true poet of the human heart. A BEST BOOK OF 2024 FROM THE ECONOMIST AND THE MINNESOTA STAR TRIBUNE “Exhilarating...What starts as a gritty depiction of one man going nowhere soon becomes a gripping tale of two lovers on the run...Both an Irish-flavored western fraught with danger and brutality and a love story filled with caustic humor and pathos....Barry’s signature touches predominate and render the narrative propulsive and immersive.”  — The Washington Post   “A rare thing…This short, tight novel pulls one so swiftly along that it can be read in a summer’s afternoon. And then once more, slowly.”  — Wall Street Journal “Like its Montana setting, Kevin Barry’s novel is brutal and gorgeous... a sense of foreboding is shot through with dark humour.”  — The Economist “There will be gun battles and knife fights. The moon will rise above dark plateaus and dreams will reach as far as the Pacific coast…Of course in the hands of Kevin Barry it almost doesn’t matter. With language that is somehow both raw and lyrical, the real point is that we ride out to meet our fate.” — The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “A dazzling tale of lovers on the run in Montana . . .A wedding of Cormac McCarthy with Flann O’Brien . . . inspiring joy with every incident, every concept, every sentence.”  —The Guardian "A dazzling tale of lovers on the run in Montana . . . Barry has written us a love story that never seems false or cheap, and an adventure where the violence is never gloating or desensitised. It’s a wedding of Cormac McCarthy with Flann O’Brien; a western but also the most Irish of novels; a tragedy written as farce . . . inspiring joy with every incident, every concept, every sentence." — The Guardian "All that should be required for you to saddle up and ride hard toward your nearest bookstore on July 9 is this: Kevin Barry does Deadwood ...Barry never disappoints, but this one is a pure pleasure. A thrilling, tumescent, poetically vulgar, big-hearted romp of a novel…utterly electrifying." — LitHub "It takes a sublime artist like Kevin Barry to map the wildest outposts of the human heart. He captures his poet bandit's spirit through language that is consistently original, consistently exhilarating. " —Claire Kilroy "An absolute belter of a book." —Anne Enright, author of The Gathering "Rip-roaring...The pleasure never lets up in Barry’s masterful novel." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “The Irish writer’s humor and prose magic give the genre’s conventions a refreshing spin…Barry’s fans will be delighted and many a newbie beguiled.” — Kirkus (starred review)   “Rollicking … Barry’s style seems magnificently effortless as Tom and Polly meet some strange and curious characters on their travels, and it seems Barry can make anything compelling. A sterling work of historical fiction and a picaresque love story that is brutal, hilarious, and fabulously entertaining.” — Booklist (starred review)   “Holy damn, it’s good.” —David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas   “Barry’s sentences dazzle like lightning strikes yet he is equally gifted as a storyteller. Humorous, though ultimately profoundly moving, The Heart in Winter further confirms Barry’s place as one of our greatest contemporary writers. –Ron Rash, author of Serena “Another bloody brilliant little symphony from Kevin Bar