posted on 08 Jan 2016

A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

Warning: it’s really difficult to review this book without detail that some people might construe as a ‘spoiler’. So, if you read this, beware!

 

I’ve never read anything by Patrick Gale before and I only came to this one because it was shortlisted for the Costa book prize and I was intrigued by the reviews that went along with it. I’m indebted to those reviewers because the book is indeed a powerful read packed with images and detail that will stay with me for a long time.

I gather from these other reviews that Gale has based some of this story on the experiences of family members who, in the past, went through some of the incidents described here but it’s not a family history. It is also worth saying upfront that this isn’t an emotionally easy read and some will find the detail harrowing. However, the physical and emotional violence and the bigotry is, I think justified and really skilfully handled.

Harry and Jack Cane are rather cosseted and complacent brothers in Edwardian England living off a private income. They make equally complacent and conservative marriages and seem to be living a  typical middle-class life until Harry’s world explodes around him. The problem is that actually Harry loves men just as much as women, if not more. When, due to an injudicious physical relationship, this is inevitably discovered he is effectively dismissed into exile to protect the rest of the extended family from disgrace.

Harry decides that the place for him is the new frontier of Canada and, in transit to his new life as a farmsteader, he falls under the influence of a truly terrible monster of a man – Troels Munck. Munck will prove to be the evil shadow that keeps returning to haunt Harry and everyone who gets close to him. Over time the soft middle-class Englishman becomes a pioneer but loses the family he left behind in England. Cut adrift he builds another life in Saskatchewan – in a place called Winter.

He becomes closely involved with his nearest neighbours – Paul and Petra Slaymaker - and falls in love with both of them, eventually living in a ménage-a-trios that sees him settled for the first time since he left England. But the presence of Munck and big external events like the First World War and the global flu epidemic pretty much ensure that Harry’s life will dissolve yet again. The slow build up to the catastrophic finale has a sort of Hardy-esque feel about – how can one man take so much sorrow?

What Harry goes through would unbalance any mind and we know from the outset that it has pushed him over the edge. The book starts with Harry in a mental hospital of sorts – Bethel -  and we periodically switch back to this setting at various points in the story. Eventually we come to realise that he’s been selected for the kind of ‘therapy’ some of the crazier wing of the political and social right still think is legitimate – the search for a cure for homosexuality.

There is a resolution of sorts at the end of the book but it’s at the level of Shakespearean tragedy and catharsis -  Harry ends up with a future but what kind of future it will be is left open.

This is a book that almost screams out to be turned into a film or television series but I fear for how it might be handled because Gale’s messages are often nuanced and subtle – these are characteristics easily lost in media other than books. The sweep of the book is also very interesting because it manages to be domestic and epic at one and the same time – a really impressive thing to pull off successfully.

The existence of a place actually called Winter in frontier Canada was, I would guess, just too good an opportunity to pass up when you are looking for an extended metaphor about the arctic nature of social attitudes that shaped social attitudes towards alternative sexualities in the early twentieth century. I can’t help but feel however that it’s a bit of a heavy-handed device that doesn’t really do justice to a book that is challenging and complex and avoids taking overtly judgemental positions.

Terry Potter

January 2016