Book Marks Reviews of The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry Book Marks

A rarity. Irish writer Kevin Barry’s fourth novel is a book with a strong plot, featuring a doomed love affair, horses, high mountains, bad weather, a desperate journey and even a knife fight; in short, a western, and a good one at that. But that plot is the least convincing thing about it, and the novel’s real power lies in the biting wit of its language… Barry’s sentences are often long and flowing, and yet also sharp-edged. They ring but they do not soothe, and it is virtually impossible to quote them at length… What sets him apart is the bright black hole, the grim laughter of his language, his sentences all made up of “bass notes and ground”. This short, dense novel draws you in so quickly that you can read it in a summer afternoon.

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Opening with a thrilling account of a long and wild night’s journey into day…Barry is an untethered author whose novels offer fresh examples of stylistic dexterity and explore new fictional terrain…Barry’s signature details dominate, making the narrative propulsive and haunting…Barry’s other major trademark is his lyrical prose. We revel in his use of vivid language, whether in the terse, hard-boiled dialect of his characters or his original imagery…Some of Barry’s scenes are mere snapshots, too brief and impressionistic for their own good. Equally disappointing is the novel’s somewhat abrupt ending. However, these shortcomings are easily outweighed by the book’s many strengths, particularly the well-drawn refugees. They run and we keep up, emotionally involved in their shared exploits and their individual fates.

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Everything in this book jumps off the page with life, so you have to take it slowly. This gives the short, atmospheric scenes time to mature in the memory, and despite the novel’s brevity, it creates an epic feel. The style, peppered with run-on sentences and hardly any commas, has something of Cormac McCarthy and Charles Portis about it… The fun of the wild goings-on wears off, and the closing chapters offer a different, satisfying minor register, a break from the pace but with new depth. It’s a risk, but that’s what Barry’s writing is all about, after all. He’s made it pay off before, and here he does it again.

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