Winterwood

by Patrick McCabe

Once, Redmond Hatch was in heaven, married to the lovely Catherine and father to enchanting daughter Immy. But then he took them both to Winterwood. And it would never be the same again…

In Patrick McCabe's spellbinding new novel, nothing―and no one―are ever quite what they seem. When Hatch, devoted husband and father, revisits the secluded mountains where he grew up, he meets Auld Pappie Ned. While he claims to be just a harmless local fiddler, a teller of tall tales, Ned sets off a cataclysmic chain of events in Redmond's life. From the mysterious disappearance of Redmond's daughter to the reluctant remembrance of a troubled boyhood to secret glimpses into an unstable marriage, everything soon spirals out of control. Narrated with hypnotic precision and fractured lyricism, Winterwood is a disturbing and unforgettable tale of love, death and identity from a masterful novelist.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Ireland, Irish Literature, Mystery, Audiobook, Crime

240 pages, Hardcover

First published November 6, 2006

About the author

Patrick McCabe came to prominence with the publication of his third adult novel, The Butcher Boy, in 1992; the book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in Britain and won the Irish Times-Aer Lingus Prize for fiction. McCabe's strength as an author lies in his ability to probe behind the veneer of respectability and conformity to reveal the brutality and the cloying and corrupting stagnation of Irish small-town life, but he is able to find compassion for the subjects of his fiction. His prose has a vitality and an anti-authoritarian bent, using everyday language to deconstruct the ideologies at work in Ireland between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. His books can be read as a plea for a pluralistic Irish culture that can encompass the past without being dominated by it.

McCabe is an Irish writer of mostly dark and violent novels of contemporary, often small-town, Ireland. His novels include The Butcher Boy (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (1998), both shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written a children's book (The Adventures of Shay Mouse) and several radio plays broadcast by the RTÉ and the BBC Radio 4. The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto have both been adapted into films by Irish director Neil Jordan.

McCabe lives in Clones, Co. Monaghan with his wife and two daughters.

Pat McCabe is also credited with having invented the "Bog Gothic" genre.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Its a wee bit tiresome when the whole book is narrated like an Irish, yes a native Irish man gone bit batty, well not a bit batty, he's feelin' quite better actually, goin' to work and such, but aye there's Ole Pappy again, and he's a-sittin' with his daughter in the winterwood, his precious wee one, the pretty lass is asleep, always asleepin, or is she but gettin back to Ole Pappy, aye that was just a dream but there he is, asittin and OH JUST SPIT IT OUT ALREADY.

[Krystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

What the heckin jeezuz did I just read???

Wow.

This book is so deeply disturbing and confusing and dark and creepy and ... dear lord, what a mess.

The prose is disjointed and the narrator is completely unreliable, which means you have to put most of the story together yourself. I enjoyed that aspect of it, but it also made it incredibly confusing and leaves a bit of a mystery to it, because how much have you figured out correctly and how much is just your own imagination?

It's so incredibly messed up, and quite clearly Red has some serious issues. This dude is what I like to refer to as a PROPER PSYCHO. It makes his story fascinating and horrifying and you never know where he's going with it. It jumps about and his feelings are constantly changing which makes the book brilliantly written but the story utterly disturbing.

This was one of those confounding novels where I immensely enjoyed feeling completely repulsed by what I was reading.

I can't say much more. The takeaway is that it's a well-written, seriously disturbing book and you should definitely read it, particularly if you enjoy feeling uncomfortable.

[Jo Berry ☀️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the first third of this book, then skimmed, then read the ending. Perhaps I’m just not the right person for this type of story. It’s confusing, jumbled and has an unreliable narrator. The story is also very grim, and not quite what I was expecting. I thought this would have a folklorish and supernatural quality to it (as that is what it was listed under at my library), but I think we’re dealing with mental illness and child abuse.


I don’t know if this is a good book or not, as it definitely wasn’t my sort of story, so it made it hard for me to judge.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winner of the 2007 Irish Book Award of the Year, Winterwood is the chilling story of Redmond Hatch, a man who appears to have defied his troubled childhood by making a happy life for himself with his beautiful wife and the daughter he adores. The novel opens with Hatch, a journalist, interviewing Ned Strange, a local folk musician, for an article on the folklore and dying traditions of his native mountain village of Slievenageeha, Ireland. Despite the muddled perspective of an unreliable narrator, it doesn't take a reader very long to realize that Strange is very...well...strange, life in the Hatch family is hardly the little slice of heaven Red first makes it out to be, and little else is what it seems.

I read Winterwood in one sitting while trapped on a New York-bound chartered bus. It was a beautiful sunshiny day, the gorgeous Pennsylvanian mountains were rolling past my window, and the giggles of my very excitable students provided me a cheery soundtrack for my reading. But no matter. The supreme creepiness of McCabe's story was so intense that it easily managed to break past all these warm, fuzzy distractions and freak me right out.

This novel is the perfect example of how a glimpse inside a troubled mind is far more terrifying than any fictional beastie a writer can dream up. Furthermore, it's a great argument for how the horror/suspense genre can be accomplished in an intelligent and artful manner. With Winterwood, McCabe trusts the intelligence of his reader enough to make him work a bit; he's purposefully cryptic and vague for a wonderfully unsettling effect. I don't think I've read anything that has disturbed me this much since The Shining - book that easily belongs in the top five on the "Creepiest Books of all Time" list, assuming such a list exists. (And it should.) This was my first experience with McCabe (The Butcher Boy), but if his other works are anything like this then sign me up. He's a truly phenomenal writer.

[andi]

what the fuck did i just read

later update: i have no idea how to rate this, i literally picked it up because it was short but i had no idea i was going to read something like this…. omfg

incredible writing and storytelling… i am just shocked… i have no idea wether i loved it or hated it

[Heather ~*dread mushrooms*~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really well-written and haunting, if you don't mind reading the ramblings of an Irish mountain man. Everything in this book starts out innocent and devolves into something horrifying. It was like a frightening but sad train wreck. I would have rated this higher if I found out exactly what happened, but the ending left a few questions unanswered.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can be sure that a horror novel about a child sexual predator is not going to be well received by the majority of the reading public.

Despite this, the critically acclaimed novel won the 2007 Irish Novel of the Year. McCabe, the author, is the literary equivalent of Stephen King in Ireland - although not as prolific.

Despite the difficult subject matter that this novel contains there is also a high degree of literary value and the writing at times is quite beautiful.

McCabe is known for writing about the darker aspects of Ireland’s rural society.

4.5 stars

[Stephen Hero · Rating 4 out of 5]

More clean prose and streamlined stream-of-conscious from your man McCabe.

The result? A worthwhile read bordering on borderline genius.

But don't take my word for it. Here are three negative reviews of the novel provided by extremely common folk expressly stolen from Amazon.com . I've culled the following, completely verbatim, mind you, simply because they make me smile.


A Poorly Written Novel
I felt that this book was very poorly written. There were too many questions left unanswered. The book reviews on the cover mislead me into expecting an exciting and eerie book...
- C. Mischo

COULDNT GET PAST THE LANGUAGE
AUDIO-BOOK: STARTED LISTENING TO THIS BUT COULDNT GET PAST THE F WORD AND VARIOUS OTHERS SAID 20+ TIMES, WITHIN THE FIRST 5 MINUTES. WHAT TALENT IT MUST TAKE TO WRITE LIKE THIS?
- Christie Smith

Disappointed
A glum story. Lacking description of today's Irish scene. Too much tragedy well written. No explanations for human perfidy. The point escapes me.
- Clifford W. Cox

[Juan Hidalgo · Rating 2 out of 5]

La verdad es que en este libro no me he enterado muy bien de quién hace qué cosa, en qué momento y en qué lugar. El protagonista, en una narración en primera persona que avanza temporalmente desde los años ochenta hasta el dos mil cinco, mezcla sus vivencias presentes con flashbacks del pasado, además entremete historias de su padre, de su tío y de un amigo de ambos. Para acabar de complicarlo todo, el personaje principal va ocultando su identidad y cambiando su personalidad a medida que huye de su pasado, y encima tiene visiones alucinatorias en las que aparece otro de los protagonistas de la historia.

En fin, un verdadero gazpacho, que incluye algunas cosas de "Desde mi cielo" (Alice Sebold), en el ambiente de "Winter's bone" (Daniel Woodrell).

[Georgia Gross · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how to say much without giving too much away. I LOVED it. It is creepy and twisty. It's somewhat a mystery, but mostly a psychological thriller (my favorite). A real page-turner. I have spent a good deal of time in my own head thinking I'm one thing and finding I'm another. This is that to the most violent level.

[solitaryfossil · Rating 5 out of 5]

A disturbing, twisting tale from the mountains of Ireland to Dublin and back again. A great read.

[Louis Theroux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark and weird!

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmm what to say about this book...

The prose is great, but the story is almost incomprehensible at times. I found myself having to re-read paragraphs at several points just to figure out what the hell the author was saying. I think there was an interesting plot in there somewhere, but it was really hard to follow - was the protagonist going insane? Was he seeing ghosts? Was Ned his dad or uncle? Did he kill his ex-wife and daughter? Who knows! All I know is that there was a rambling book that only loosely contained a story about a guy who interviewed an old man from his hometown, then got divorced and couldn't see his daughter, faked his own death, then may or may not have stalked, kidnapped and killed his daughter and ex at the urging of either 1) the ghost of the old man or 2) his hallucinations in the form of the "ghost" of the old man.

I think my biggest take away from this book is that I should NOT pick up books that have effusive praise on the back/inside flap of the dust jacket instead of a description of what the book is about. Because this book ended up being about nothing that I could discern.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 4 out of 5]

The trick to enjoying this book is surely not to try to wrestle it into a linear sense. That is not McCabe's intention with his slippery narrator.

The structure reminded me a bit of a song. With new verses, but coming back again and again to a familiar chorus. I also thought about smoke, drifting on the breeze, you smell it and you know that something is burning, but you don't know what, or how much damage has occured.

Redmond Hatch is a narrator I will never forget. I was gripped by every word he uttered, I drew closer so as not to miss one, despite how disturbing his story often was.

Skillfully handled throughout, another great book from McCabe.

[Jinx:The:Poet {the LiteraryWanderer & WordRoamer} · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winterwood: A Novel by Patrick McCabe, was indeed a tangled web of utter weirdness, of the Irish variety. As a standing fact, I enjoy very weird, disturbing, psychological thrillers and the Irish. So it stands to reason this book would be right up my alley of weirdness. And, for the most part it was. It really was.

"Once, Redmond Hatch was in heaven, married to the lovely Catherine and father to enchanting daughter Immy. But then he took them both to Winterwood. And it would never be the same again…

In Patrick McCabe's spellbinding new novel, nothing—and no one—are ever quite what they seem. When Hatch, devoted husband and father, revisits the secluded mountains where he grew up, he meets Auld Pappie Ned. While he claims to be just a harmless local fiddler, a teller of tall tales, Ned sets off a cataclysmic chain of events in Redmond's life. From the mysterious disappearance of Redmond's daughter to the reluctant remembrance of a troubled boyhood to secret glimpses into an unstable marriage, everything soon spirals out of control. Narrated with hypnotic precision and fractured lyricism, Winterwood is a disturbing and unforgettable tale of love, death and identity from a masterful novelist." -Book Blurb

One of the many things I loved about this novel, aside from the chaotic yet beautiful prose, was the narration. I loved that, as a reader, it grew gradually more and more difficult to trust the voice of the narrator. I love how you start with one image of his reality but then it all changes so many times, and, along the way, you are allowed glimpses of the dishonest or rather, increasingly self-deluded, nature of the narrator. Eventually everything becomes more and more fragmented.

Winterwood was a very well written, and psychologically disturbing book. At first you can only imagine where this book will end up, its hard to tell. Then, faster than a blink of an eye, you realize, it is snowballing downhill and morphing into something bizarre, dangerous, and disturbing. I would not recommend this book to anyone squeamish, and it should be read by mature adults as it contains some very mature disturbing subject matter.

Altogether, I really liked this one. I only wish more of my questions had been answered, and that the ending didn’t feel so vague. Otherwise, this was a dark and creepy read of insanity. Recommended for mature readers.

[CONTENT & TRIGGER WARNING BELOW...]

[OFFICIAL RATING: 4.5 STARS]



[CONTENT NOTE: Language and crude imagery. (There are some harsh curse words littered throughout, usually the segments which concerned Ole Pappy. And there are also some innuendo to sexual abuse of children, which is disturbing and strongly applied.) There are some dark imagery and themes, such as violence, sexual abuse of children, the narrator struggles with mental illness as well as haunting memories of his past, murder is vaguely implied through the use of the symbolic place of Winterwood. Alcoholism is also show as well as the abuse of sleeping pills. Not recommended for young readers.]

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Winterwood" sounds like a place you might like to visit on a cold day to sit down by the fire and listen to old-timey tales of holy wells and fairy trees. Well, it's no place you want to go. And Ned "Auld Pappie" Strange is no James Stephens, unless Stephens was secretly a mean drunk with a dark heart who lured wee children to his forest lair for unspeakable purposes. But Stephens was no Pappie, and I hope Patrick McCabe isn't either... but he definitely knows something about the pathology of violence and child abuse.

I'm not sure what he's after here, but McCabe starts with a load of sing-song diddly idle, scrapes away the veneer of Irish charm, and then proceeds to give us an understated story of child abuse and murder. And then he gently covers it with another layer of bog shite, just to make sure we get the point. It's a stark and terrifying story. Well done, but he can forget about that job with the Irish Tourism board.

[Bridgette · Rating 1 out of 5]

Where was the climax??? I've never read a book that tries so hard to build up the shock factor that it actually misses it completely. I kept waiting for the point where someone would acknowledge what ACTUALLY happened and it NEVER came. This book just beat around the pediphilia bush and was utterly dull and pointless. It is my understanding that the author has won, or was nominated, for the Man Booker prize but I'm hoping it was not for Winterwood.

[Anushka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely disturbing and psychologically mind f***ing book. I absolutely hated it, though I know some people did like it. Unlike Humbert Humbert in Lolita, Redmond Hatch/ Ned Strange - the men of the mountain, are just completely repulsive - I dont buy into the whole 'they are both victim and perpetrator' - this book makes me want to have a shower and wash it off my skin and run. Far and fast.

[Erin.Evelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like Irish Appalachia . disturbing.

[Brendan Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark and unsettling. You know what's going to happen, but you keep reading, hoping that you're going to be wrong. You aren't. Great writing.

[callaina]

still one of the most horrible books i've ever read

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is, by far, the scariest thing i’ve ever read about fiddles and old mountain men, and i grew up in Appalachia

[Nina Nina · Rating 1 out of 5]

the shit i have to read for college. nyways.

[Geoff Wooldridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Irish writer Patrick McCabe was short-listed for the Dublin Literary Award for this novel in 2008. I have previously read his novel The Emerald Germs of Ireland, which was good although not outstanding.

Winterwood was an unusual novel, chilling and disturbing, one that was not always easy to follow, as the key character, Redmond Hatch, left his birth place in the mountains of Ireland, a place called Slievenageeha (I'm only typing that once!) to become a journalist, husband and father, and then something else quite a bit more sinister than that.

The other ubiquitous presence in the novel is a hillbilly known as Ned Strange, sometimes referred to Auld Poppie, by the hill folk. Ned was a fiddler, a story teller, a prize bullshit artist, probably a murderer and certainly a paedophile.

It was Ned who told Redmond stories about life in the mountains and inspired the journalist to compile a written record of this unique folklore. These stories ultimately led much later to a television documentary, for which Redmond, who was then known as Dominic Tiernan, won several prestigious awards.

The tone of Winterwood is constantly dark, malevolent and threatening. There is some weird shit going on that we are not being told everything about. The story is not always told in a linear fashion, and certain events are never quite described in full before Red moves onto to some other random thought about something that either happened or he imagined. It's fair to say that Ned Strange, even after he was actually dead, lived rent-free in Redmond's head.

Red found the girl of his dreams -Catherine Courtney - married her, and for a time, life was good. The had a daughter, Imogen, or Immy, who was fascinated by My Little Pony stories, and who was Red's little angel.

But the marriage goes awry when Catherine takes a lover and then marries another man. Catherine and Immy are lost to Red, but that doesn't stop him from fantasizing about them in an increasingly disturbing manner.

He made contact with Immy one day when she was home alone, and he took her to the Winterwood. Immy had moved on from My Little Pony and was now smitten by Sweet Valley High. Immy never left Winterwood.

Some time later, Redmond, who was now working as Dominic the cab driver, had a chance encounter with Catherine, and she also was taken to the Winterwood, where she was reunited with Imogen.

Red/Dominic had, in the meantime remarried, this time to Casey, with whom he was happy and successful in his television career. But Casey also let him down, just like Catherine.

The ending, which I will say very little about for fear of spoilers, is kind of messy (the whole novel is messy, reflecting, I guess, the state of Redmond's disintegrating brain), as disparate threads come together to explain, somewhat, much of what has been left deliberately vague.

McCabe has been quite deliberate in his fragmentary style of story telling, creating confusion, a chilling atmosphere that leaves the reader feeling an uneasy sense of foreboding that not everything is as it should be and whatever it really is is certainly not good.

However, I found the style annoying and repetitious at times, almost a random stream of consciousness, and I didn't really enjoy that.

But Ned Strange and Redmond Hatch, and the disturbing unease associated with them and their wicked stories, will stay with me for a while.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this overall just rather dull and very confusing. The synopsis stated the story to be 'spell-binding' which I certainly found it was not. I read through some of the reviews upon finishing and some commended the confusing nature of this story, but I didn't find it the kind of confusing that adds to the mystery of the story. I just had no idea what was going on, who was who, what happened when or anything. Part of this is probably due to listening to this on audiobook so I miss things occasionally but even so I'm not usually left this confused at the end of a story. And I just didn't really care about what was happening or the characters.

I will say I enjoyed the narration, the narrator on the audiobook does a fantastic job and the general writing style was enjoyable too.

[Anna Reads Mysteries]

This just wasn't my vibe.
I did not get far in - it's about a guy who goes to his hometown and starts chatting up an Irish old timer... a bunch of nothing happened. From the synopsis I'm guessing that the old guy is not who he seems. So far all he did was tell tales and cut a few loose. And at that point, I had to stop.

The voice of the story teller felt very dry, as if I was listening to the news, not to a book.

[Trevor · Rating 2 out of 5]

That was a very odd read, and one that I didn’t particularly enjoy.

[Sarah Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF - got about 1/3 of the way through. Initially this was interesting, but the timeline seemed to be jumping about all over the place. I also found the main protagonist unlikeable!

[Christine Ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting and at time I found it hard to follow the narrative, the time line jumps can always be troublesome. It was well written and the imagery is very clear but dark, so very dark. But I finished the book, so that says something about it as I normally wouldn’t read about such topics.

[Kevin]

I’m afraid of reading another Skippy Dies, so had to abandon this. It’s really good writing though, and I loved Butcher Boy, despite the cartoon violence. Maybe it’s just because I’ll becoming increasingly sensitive with age, but I don’t feel the need to be challenged with fictional horrors.