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Butterfly Winter: A Novel
Butterfly Winter, W.P. Kinsella's first novel in 15 years, is the story of Julio and Esteban Pimental, twins born in the Caribbean country of Courteguay, a lush and enchanted but impoverished enclave on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic where time moves at its own pace and reality is open to question. The brothers are destined to play ball in America, and to shape the history of their baseball-crazed homeland. They mature quickly and by the age of ten they leave home for the Major Leagues. Julio is a winning pitcher who, much to the chagrin of any team that signs him, will only throw to his catcher brother, who is a very weak hitter. As they pursue their baseball dreams, events in their homeland, including political brutalities and the outlawing of baseball, continue to shape their lives. They are monitored by the Wizard, a mysterious figure who controls events behind the scenes. In his last years, the Wizard tells the story of the twins, their family and their lovers to a skeptical gringo journalist. Butterfly Winter is a magical literary romp that includes a diabolical chiropractor, a romance blessed by butterflies and a deep political undercurrent that unites the wealthy north with the baseball-loving, talent-laden but oppressed and deprived south.
300 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
About the author
W.P. Kinsella
57 books235 followersWilliam Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
November 29, 2011
Why the return of W.P. Kinsella wasn't heralded throughout the northern kingdom with hosannas and blaring trumpets I will never understand. Considering that the once-prolific author had claimed his career was over after a severe car crash left him unable to write, the printed return of Kinsella to his three loves (baseball, magic realism, and more baseball) should have been front-page news. Instead, Butterfly Winter slips onto the shelves unnoticed, released by a small independent publisher to a few good reviews. This must be rectified. Kinsella, in addition to being the finest writer there is or ever was of baseball lore (and this coming from an avowed sports unenthusiast), is one of the last true practitioners of the free-wheeling comedic plot practised and perfected by Tom Robbins, Jim Dodge, Edward Abbey, and Richard Brautigan. True to form, Butterfly Winter is a breezy treat, a magical journey to a land where lying is the norm and you can never be sure of the truth.
Read the rest of the review here.
Read the rest of the review here.
May 19, 2013
Now, this is a wild book. It starts with the birth of an unusual set of twins in the country of Courteguay, a magical spot carved out of worthless jungle between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And when I say magical, I'm not using florid language. There's a baseball player that rusts in the rain. There's another man whose depth perception is thrown off due to a common visual problem. This causes others to perceive him as being paper thin. There's also a wizard who prefers to travel by balloon, fixes baseball games as part of his living, and may have trained birds to function as killer drones.
It is a mistake to think of this as a baseball novel, as most people think of all of Kinsella's novels. This is a history of the not-quite-modern age in Courteguay with periodic sidetrips to the US. It's magical realism establishes whether you can accept the book or not. Personally, I liked its absurdity. I liked its insistence to be met on its own terms. I liked Kinsella's decision to just lay what he was thinking out there, even if it wasn't going to be what people expected. But I loved the characters from Julio and Esteban, the magical twins who began playing Major League baseball at 10, to the wizard, and even the evil Dr. Noir.
Look, this book...you're either going to like it or you're not. You'll buy into it, or you won't. I liked it a whole lot.
It is a mistake to think of this as a baseball novel, as most people think of all of Kinsella's novels. This is a history of the not-quite-modern age in Courteguay with periodic sidetrips to the US. It's magical realism establishes whether you can accept the book or not. Personally, I liked its absurdity. I liked its insistence to be met on its own terms. I liked Kinsella's decision to just lay what he was thinking out there, even if it wasn't going to be what people expected. But I loved the characters from Julio and Esteban, the magical twins who began playing Major League baseball at 10, to the wizard, and even the evil Dr. Noir.
Look, this book...you're either going to like it or you're not. You'll buy into it, or you won't. I liked it a whole lot.
January 28, 2015
A chapter of this book, the basis for the title, is basically the same as a short story he published in the 80s. I was about 13 when I read it. It was and remains the most romantic thing I've ever read. It holds up for me 25 years later like no other book or movie I've revisited as an adult. It is beyond beautiful. It's why I'm crazy about monarchs to this day.
Kinsella remains my favorite author.
Calling this book magical realism is a stretch of the term "realism." It takes place in a fictional country wedged between Haiti and the Dominican Republic where the inexplicable is the norm. But no matter what crazy nonsense happens, Kinsella's lyrical prose carries you along for the ride.
Kinsella remains my favorite author.
Calling this book magical realism is a stretch of the term "realism." It takes place in a fictional country wedged between Haiti and the Dominican Republic where the inexplicable is the norm. But no matter what crazy nonsense happens, Kinsella's lyrical prose carries you along for the ride.
December 10, 2024
I have been a big fan of W.P. Kinsella for many years and was surprised to find this book existed. He had stopped writing after a serious accident in 1997. On a recent trip to the Boston Public Library, i was delighted to find Butterfly Winter, published in 2013.
I will refrain from trying to string together adjectives to describe this book. You are as likely to find a narrative arc in a bowl of ramen as in the pages of this book. The short chapters reveal the perspectives and stories of a handful of narrators, some more reliable than others. Somewhere around chapter 5, I stopped trying to master the information about the characters and their world, and just allowed myself to go for a dip in the colors and the magic, the inventive absurdities and the exceptional world world anchored in baseball.
It's fun, it's challenging, it's goofy, it's a thrill from a master writer. Read it if you can find it.
I will refrain from trying to string together adjectives to describe this book. You are as likely to find a narrative arc in a bowl of ramen as in the pages of this book. The short chapters reveal the perspectives and stories of a handful of narrators, some more reliable than others. Somewhere around chapter 5, I stopped trying to master the information about the characters and their world, and just allowed myself to go for a dip in the colors and the magic, the inventive absurdities and the exceptional world world anchored in baseball.
It's fun, it's challenging, it's goofy, it's a thrill from a master writer. Read it if you can find it.
August 5, 2018
I think that there was much that I missed in this book. It seems to be an oddball combination of baseball yarn and Latin American magical realism, which is completely fine except that I don't have much experience in reading the latter genre. It's sparked an interest in tackling Jorge Luis Borges, so in that sense I'm happy I read it.
I suppose that what turned me off on this book (and fairly early on, I should say) was its complete and unrestrained hostility towards religion. I'm a liberal Christian: I've always voted Democrat, I wish that the US had the social democrat policies of the Scandinavian countries. From my personal experience most atheists are good people, live-and-let-live types who don't care for religion but are quick to defend people's rights to it. I understand the damage that the Religious Right has done to belief, but that doesn't justify clownish reproaches to faith and all religious people in general. Atheists have their assholes, too, and I was very disappointed to discover that W.P. Kinsella, an author whom I otherwise have had high respect for over the years, fits into that fold. Calling religion stupid, challenging the intelligence levels of people who believe in God... Kinsella should have known better. I can name a good number of authors and artists who have written much deeper work and have had a far greater impact on world literature who also happen to be religious. Would Kinsella so openly doubt the intelligence of Dostoyevsky? The broad and categorical statements he makes in this work would suggest that he believes all religious people are imbeciles. His irrationalism isn't even competently disguised: at one point he offers sincere personal praise for Jimmy Carter (the most devout Christian president to have ever lived in the White House). People have the right to criticize religion, but the criticism should be holistic, nuanced, thoughtful and weighed in order to be taken seriously. Kinsella's complaints come off more as screaming against the world than anything else.
2 stars instead of 1, given the creativity in the narrative design and the humor.
I suppose that what turned me off on this book (and fairly early on, I should say) was its complete and unrestrained hostility towards religion. I'm a liberal Christian: I've always voted Democrat, I wish that the US had the social democrat policies of the Scandinavian countries. From my personal experience most atheists are good people, live-and-let-live types who don't care for religion but are quick to defend people's rights to it. I understand the damage that the Religious Right has done to belief, but that doesn't justify clownish reproaches to faith and all religious people in general. Atheists have their assholes, too, and I was very disappointed to discover that W.P. Kinsella, an author whom I otherwise have had high respect for over the years, fits into that fold. Calling religion stupid, challenging the intelligence levels of people who believe in God... Kinsella should have known better. I can name a good number of authors and artists who have written much deeper work and have had a far greater impact on world literature who also happen to be religious. Would Kinsella so openly doubt the intelligence of Dostoyevsky? The broad and categorical statements he makes in this work would suggest that he believes all religious people are imbeciles. His irrationalism isn't even competently disguised: at one point he offers sincere personal praise for Jimmy Carter (the most devout Christian president to have ever lived in the White House). People have the right to criticize religion, but the criticism should be holistic, nuanced, thoughtful and weighed in order to be taken seriously. Kinsella's complaints come off more as screaming against the world than anything else.
2 stars instead of 1, given the creativity in the narrative design and the humor.
November 18, 2013
A wonderful book. Except for one disturbing chapter, it is full of Kinsella's fantastic storytelling. It's his first book in a while, and I am glad he's back.
February 20, 2026
What??
What a disappointing and strange book by the guy who wrote the novel that inspired the film Field of Dreams.
It was to me, just a load of bonkers chapters, many of which didn’t knit into the thread of the so called story.
It’s as if I was reading a first draft, compiled of chapters that made little sense and had no construct to the whole story until they could be reassembled into a story that made sense. But didn’t.
It’s possibly a bit like trying to ‘read’ Pulp fiction. The movie jumps around all over the place but you piece it together at the end. There was no piecing this together for me. I don’t really know what just happened, and I could scarcely tell someone what the book was about 🤷🏼♀️
However, there were some beautifully descriptive analogies in it that I wish I’d written down to quote here. Ones that really provoked my imagination and made me think ‘wow!’
What a disappointing and strange book by the guy who wrote the novel that inspired the film Field of Dreams.
It was to me, just a load of bonkers chapters, many of which didn’t knit into the thread of the so called story.
It’s as if I was reading a first draft, compiled of chapters that made little sense and had no construct to the whole story until they could be reassembled into a story that made sense. But didn’t.
It’s possibly a bit like trying to ‘read’ Pulp fiction. The movie jumps around all over the place but you piece it together at the end. There was no piecing this together for me. I don’t really know what just happened, and I could scarcely tell someone what the book was about 🤷🏼♀️
However, there were some beautifully descriptive analogies in it that I wish I’d written down to quote here. Ones that really provoked my imagination and made me think ‘wow!’
July 27, 2018
I hate writing a bad review--especially of a book written by Kinsella. But his imagination ran away with him, and his novel is just too wierd.
Maybe that is my fault. Maybe I've an insufficient capacity for weirdness. But I'm all I've got. And, no matter how delicious his prose, his story is too wierd for me.
Maybe that is my fault. Maybe I've an insufficient capacity for weirdness. But I'm all I've got. And, no matter how delicious his prose, his story is too wierd for me.
July 6, 2017
Too weird. I couldn't get a grasp of the point of any of it. I read for maybe 50 pages and decided to move on.
February 12, 2018
I was really looking forward to this book - what a great idea, to take the whimsy and magic of "Shoeless Joe" or "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" and plop it down on the island of Hispaniola, in a fictional country that is not the Dominican Republic, but similar in some ways.
It is the perfect setting for a baseball story told through magical realism. The book fit the bill in that respect, inviting readers to suspend disbelief and become consumed in the world of the story.
That said, baseball was far less at the forefront of this story as the other Kinsella books I have read. As a result it felt like less of an escape for me - that, coupled with the tyrannical president of Courteguay and the horrible things he did made this less relaxing for me. Furthermore, I wasn't wild about the presentation of women in this one. So I'm giving this one a mixed review, and a mixed rating - but if you're into Kinsella's other works, there's no real reason to skip this one.
It is the perfect setting for a baseball story told through magical realism. The book fit the bill in that respect, inviting readers to suspend disbelief and become consumed in the world of the story.
That said, baseball was far less at the forefront of this story as the other Kinsella books I have read. As a result it felt like less of an escape for me - that, coupled with the tyrannical president of Courteguay and the horrible things he did made this less relaxing for me. Furthermore, I wasn't wild about the presentation of women in this one. So I'm giving this one a mixed review, and a mixed rating - but if you're into Kinsella's other works, there's no real reason to skip this one.
Read
January 4, 2020Too weird. I have no interest in finishing.
March 26, 2020
Very entertaining, highly creative. It's a shame that he missed so many years of writing because if he could have turned out two or three more like this during that time, we'd all be better off.
March 12, 2013
Magic has long played a prominent role in the world of W.P. Kinsella, where Iowa cornfields come to life and obsessed fans travel through cracks in time to witness epic baseball battles. In Butterfly Winter, his first novel in 15 years, he kicks the hoodoo up a notch, handing the job of primary storyteller over to a baseball-evangelist-turned-wizard from the enchanted Caribbean nation of Courteguay, a fictional country wedged between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Kinsella employs a gringo journalist to draw from the wizard both the story of Courteguay and that of the Pimental brothers. Julio and Esteban, fraternal twins who look nothing like each other, played for 20 years in the U.S. major leagues, beginning when they were just 10, thanks to doctored paperwork that added six years to their age. Julio, who began pitching to Esteban when the two were still in their mother’s womb, is nearly unhittable, provided he is pitching to his brother, a woeful hitter who would never make a roster if not for the fact that the two come as a package deal.
The boys return each offseason to Courteguay, ignoring the constant political turmoil and regular overthrows of the government. One winter Julio meets and falls in love with Quita, the daughter of former Courteguayan baseball great Milan Garza. They consummate their union high in the hills under skies so thick with monarch butterflies the sun is blotted out by their fluttering wings. Julio and Quita pass the winter under a blanket of butterflies, emerging in the spring just in time for him to return to the States.
Quita’s subsequent encounter with the wicked Dr. Noir, a sadistic former chiropractor who has taken over as dictator of Courteguay, spawns the only dramatic tension in a book that deals more in fantastic yarns and wild stories, many of which wander off the thin plot for no apparent reason other than to add more brushstrokes to the colorful Courteguayan canvas Kinsella has painted. Among the 78 mini chapters are digressions on a player who pees ice water, an outfielder who rusts in the rain, and a crop of tropical plants that procreate with an endangered tribe of jungle women.
The writing is enriched by vintage Kinsella descriptions. The city of San Cristobel is baked by “a carnivorous sun.” En route to Courteguay, the young wizard encounters “fundamentalists so narrow they could look through a keyhole with both eyes.” The boys’ father would wake at night, his head overflowing with visions, “his mind like a box of photographs scattered callously on a floor.” A deposed general “was dressed in camouflage fatigues, his beard ragged as Spanish moss hanging from a tree branch.”
Despite the frequent lyrical bursts, Butterfly Winter does not stand with Kinsella’s strongest work. Shoeless Joe ranks among the greatest baseball novels ever written, and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy better blends magic with a thinking, feeling protagonist the reader can latch onto. Butterfly Winter lacks that central figure to identify with. Whose story is this? The wizard’s? The gringo journalist’s? Julio’s? Esteban’s? Courteguay’s? Is it a baseball story or the tale of a mystical, tumultuous jungle nation? The only thing we know for sure is we’re not in Iowa anymore.
Kinsella employs a gringo journalist to draw from the wizard both the story of Courteguay and that of the Pimental brothers. Julio and Esteban, fraternal twins who look nothing like each other, played for 20 years in the U.S. major leagues, beginning when they were just 10, thanks to doctored paperwork that added six years to their age. Julio, who began pitching to Esteban when the two were still in their mother’s womb, is nearly unhittable, provided he is pitching to his brother, a woeful hitter who would never make a roster if not for the fact that the two come as a package deal.
The boys return each offseason to Courteguay, ignoring the constant political turmoil and regular overthrows of the government. One winter Julio meets and falls in love with Quita, the daughter of former Courteguayan baseball great Milan Garza. They consummate their union high in the hills under skies so thick with monarch butterflies the sun is blotted out by their fluttering wings. Julio and Quita pass the winter under a blanket of butterflies, emerging in the spring just in time for him to return to the States.
Quita’s subsequent encounter with the wicked Dr. Noir, a sadistic former chiropractor who has taken over as dictator of Courteguay, spawns the only dramatic tension in a book that deals more in fantastic yarns and wild stories, many of which wander off the thin plot for no apparent reason other than to add more brushstrokes to the colorful Courteguayan canvas Kinsella has painted. Among the 78 mini chapters are digressions on a player who pees ice water, an outfielder who rusts in the rain, and a crop of tropical plants that procreate with an endangered tribe of jungle women.
The writing is enriched by vintage Kinsella descriptions. The city of San Cristobel is baked by “a carnivorous sun.” En route to Courteguay, the young wizard encounters “fundamentalists so narrow they could look through a keyhole with both eyes.” The boys’ father would wake at night, his head overflowing with visions, “his mind like a box of photographs scattered callously on a floor.” A deposed general “was dressed in camouflage fatigues, his beard ragged as Spanish moss hanging from a tree branch.”
Despite the frequent lyrical bursts, Butterfly Winter does not stand with Kinsella’s strongest work. Shoeless Joe ranks among the greatest baseball novels ever written, and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy better blends magic with a thinking, feeling protagonist the reader can latch onto. Butterfly Winter lacks that central figure to identify with. Whose story is this? The wizard’s? The gringo journalist’s? Julio’s? Esteban’s? Courteguay’s? Is it a baseball story or the tale of a mystical, tumultuous jungle nation? The only thing we know for sure is we’re not in Iowa anymore.
February 22, 2014
This review first appeared on the Magic Realism review blog http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.com
W P Kinsella's magic realist baseball novel Shoeless Joe, the book that was translated into the film Field of Dreams, was already on my to-read (and to-buy) list, when I got the opportunity to receive a review copy of this, his last book. Kinsella had given up on writing following being struck by a car but then after fifteen years at the age of 76 Kinsella published this book.
Butterfly Winter reads like a book by someone who is overflowing with ideas and enthusiasm and enjoying the process of writing tremendously. The book revels in magic - a blanket of monarch butterflies cover the bodies of young lovers, foetuses play baseball in the womb, plants grow and flower upside down, soldiers are speared by herons - so much so that the realism plays a lesser part. Set in a fictional magical Latin American country instead of a magical USA this book is closer to the roots of magic realism.
Although the book has baseball as a theme, it is also about writing and fiction. There are two narrators - a gringo journalist (perhaps a fictional Kinsella), investigating the story of the baseball-playing twins as well as the history and politics of Courteguay, and an old wizard, baseball guru, country's president and fraudster (perhaps also Kinsella). Kinsella has great fun with the latter narrator, whose identity shifts along with his name during the course of the book: I am what is known in literary circles as an unreliable narrator. The wizard's ironic comments allow Kinsella to explore the nature of fantasy and truth: Who's to say what is truth. People tell tales, and as the tales emerge they become as good as truth. In Courteguay, anything that can be imagined exists. The telling is the truth. Truth is spun like silk: truth is manufactured.
All this makes for a fun and funny book, but then Kinsella ventures into the dark territory of Latin American magic realism as the pregnant partner of one of the twins is held and tortured as a political opponent of the sadistic dictator of Courteguay. The change of tone is a shock, but not nearly as shocking as the way the story then continues in a generally comic vein.
Kinsella also plays with the chronology of the story, which moves backwards and forwards all over the place. As the wizard comments: This is Courteguay... The word chronological is not in our language, neither is sequence. Things happen. That is all there is to it.
The book isn't perfect. Kinsella has rather too much fun packing the magic realist kitchen sink into the seventy-eight short chapters. But readers of magic realism are bound to find much to enjoy.
I was given this book by the publisher via Edelweiss in return for a fair review.
W P Kinsella's magic realist baseball novel Shoeless Joe, the book that was translated into the film Field of Dreams, was already on my to-read (and to-buy) list, when I got the opportunity to receive a review copy of this, his last book. Kinsella had given up on writing following being struck by a car but then after fifteen years at the age of 76 Kinsella published this book.
Butterfly Winter reads like a book by someone who is overflowing with ideas and enthusiasm and enjoying the process of writing tremendously. The book revels in magic - a blanket of monarch butterflies cover the bodies of young lovers, foetuses play baseball in the womb, plants grow and flower upside down, soldiers are speared by herons - so much so that the realism plays a lesser part. Set in a fictional magical Latin American country instead of a magical USA this book is closer to the roots of magic realism.
Although the book has baseball as a theme, it is also about writing and fiction. There are two narrators - a gringo journalist (perhaps a fictional Kinsella), investigating the story of the baseball-playing twins as well as the history and politics of Courteguay, and an old wizard, baseball guru, country's president and fraudster (perhaps also Kinsella). Kinsella has great fun with the latter narrator, whose identity shifts along with his name during the course of the book: I am what is known in literary circles as an unreliable narrator. The wizard's ironic comments allow Kinsella to explore the nature of fantasy and truth: Who's to say what is truth. People tell tales, and as the tales emerge they become as good as truth. In Courteguay, anything that can be imagined exists. The telling is the truth. Truth is spun like silk: truth is manufactured.
All this makes for a fun and funny book, but then Kinsella ventures into the dark territory of Latin American magic realism as the pregnant partner of one of the twins is held and tortured as a political opponent of the sadistic dictator of Courteguay. The change of tone is a shock, but not nearly as shocking as the way the story then continues in a generally comic vein.
Kinsella also plays with the chronology of the story, which moves backwards and forwards all over the place. As the wizard comments: This is Courteguay... The word chronological is not in our language, neither is sequence. Things happen. That is all there is to it.
The book isn't perfect. Kinsella has rather too much fun packing the magic realist kitchen sink into the seventy-eight short chapters. But readers of magic realism are bound to find much to enjoy.
I was given this book by the publisher via Edelweiss in return for a fair review.
August 15, 2013
Think of the madness of Catch-22 and combine it with the beauty of The Life of Pi and add in the darkest of political satires and there you have Butterfly Winter.
Ostensibly the book tells the tale of the Pimental Brothers, a set of twins born into the country of Courtequay. They reputedly played baseball in their mother’s womb (one a great pitcher, the other an average catcher) and would go on to become baseball heroes. I say ‘ostensibly’ because in this book there is no knowing what is real and what is not real. There are numerous contradictions, magical acts, traumatic events and outright madness. But did any of it really happen? Does it really matter if it did or not? It is fiction after all! Or is it???
This is as much a book about story-telling as it is about the story it tells. There is baseball of course (no WP Kinsella book would be complete without it!) but unlike his previous works, namely Shoeless Joe and (in my humble opinion) the unparalleled Iowa Baseball Confederacy, Butterfly Winter presents a much grander vision. This is a book that makes you smile and encourages you to believe that anything is possible. There is no logic to either the narrative or the plot and absolutely no nod towards linear time, so don’t expect any. I encourage you just to read it for what it is – a touch of magic worthy of The Wizard himself!
Ostensibly the book tells the tale of the Pimental Brothers, a set of twins born into the country of Courtequay. They reputedly played baseball in their mother’s womb (one a great pitcher, the other an average catcher) and would go on to become baseball heroes. I say ‘ostensibly’ because in this book there is no knowing what is real and what is not real. There are numerous contradictions, magical acts, traumatic events and outright madness. But did any of it really happen? Does it really matter if it did or not? It is fiction after all! Or is it???
This is as much a book about story-telling as it is about the story it tells. There is baseball of course (no WP Kinsella book would be complete without it!) but unlike his previous works, namely Shoeless Joe and (in my humble opinion) the unparalleled Iowa Baseball Confederacy, Butterfly Winter presents a much grander vision. This is a book that makes you smile and encourages you to believe that anything is possible. There is no logic to either the narrative or the plot and absolutely no nod towards linear time, so don’t expect any. I encourage you just to read it for what it is – a touch of magic worthy of The Wizard himself!
April 17, 2015
In some ways I retain mixed feelings about this book. I'm a Kinsella fan dating back to Shoeless Joe and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. I've read his short story collections where his excursions into surrealism have not always worked for me.
It is the surrealism here that leaves me wondering about how I really felt about this book. For me at times it resembled the movie Pulp Fiction. This is not linear story telling, and at times there are multiple viewpoints of the same events.
On the surface it is the story of twins Julio and Esteban Pimental. Two brothers who played catch in their mother's womb, and upon making it to the major leagues Julio would only pitch if Esteban caught. That's the surface story. There is the tale of one regime change after another in their native Latin America country, courting rituals in a land where time does flow like a stream, life, death and resurrection.
So, this is not not an easy book to describe. I do recommend it if you want to try a writer who is writing about life, love religion, philosophy and baseball and love as if it is poetry.
It is the surrealism here that leaves me wondering about how I really felt about this book. For me at times it resembled the movie Pulp Fiction. This is not linear story telling, and at times there are multiple viewpoints of the same events.
On the surface it is the story of twins Julio and Esteban Pimental. Two brothers who played catch in their mother's womb, and upon making it to the major leagues Julio would only pitch if Esteban caught. That's the surface story. There is the tale of one regime change after another in their native Latin America country, courting rituals in a land where time does flow like a stream, life, death and resurrection.
So, this is not not an easy book to describe. I do recommend it if you want to try a writer who is writing about life, love religion, philosophy and baseball and love as if it is poetry.
February 15, 2014
Ok, so I have no idea what just happen! I could not put this down, but not because I wrapped in the story line, but I spent the entire book trying to figure out what I was missing!!!!! If I did not know better I would have thought that I dropped acid when I started the book and as the closing line came to an end my drug induced trip was over, and all I could remember was that I loved baseball, and really don't miss doing drugs!!!! Oh yea this is the same guy that wrote Shoeless Joe Jackson, nevermind all that stuff I wrote before.
April 11, 2014
Very dreamy, filled with a lot of magical realism and intentional contradictions, but with an equal portion of baseball. It sounds like just my kind of thing, but I never felt compelled to pick it up. Maybe it was too loosely structured, or worked the non-chronological/untrustworthy narrator angle too hard? I think I would have liked it better if, amid all the loose ends, they had tied up the prophesy that Julio will fly some day. I think that was an important loose end, and I felt ungratified by the end without resolution or even mention of it.
February 18, 2015
It's probably not really fair to rate a book that I have hardly begun. But try as I might, I just couldn't manage to get past about page 10. And I'm so disappointed. Because I loved the lyricism of Shoeless Joe, the Silas Ermineskin short stories (Fencepost Chronicles, Dance Me Outside), and the baseball short stories (Thrill of the Grass).
So I had high hopes for Butterfly Winter. Only to have them dashed. Maybe it was just me, but the writing of Butterfly Winter felt stilted and mannered. Too bad.
So I had high hopes for Butterfly Winter. Only to have them dashed. Maybe it was just me, but the writing of Butterfly Winter felt stilted and mannered. Too bad.
August 25, 2013
Kudos to whomever wrote the summary on the back of the book because it made me excited to read this book. I loved Kinsella's 'Shoeless Joe' so I had high expectations. It felt a bit like the book I was reading and the one I expected from reading the back of the book, were two separate stories. I think there were some good points in this book but I probably wouldn't recommend it. Simply put, it was a let down.
April 12, 2012
I wanted to like this book. I tried, I really did. I love WP Kinsella madly, have read almost all of this books. I loved the magic realism in this one, the whimsey -- but it just got *too* strange, and then it got weird and then it got violent and I gave up. When my 3 week library loan was up, I brought it back unfinished.
May 8, 2013
Kinsella heads south to Courteguay, the baseball legend-producing country on Hispaniola nestled between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It’s a country where twins play catch in the womb, dictators and insurgents take turns in and out of power, and a wizard dictates nearly all. A nice read, good on politics and culture, but the magical realism doesn’t quite swoon as in Shoeless Joe.
June 14, 2012
Not Kinsella's greatest effort, but I'm willing to give him a pass considering the circumstances. The magical realism is appealing but the lack of a coherent plot and few really good baseball scenes left me wanting more. These could have been great characters with the right kind of story.
couldn-t-finish
November 15, 2011Could not finish this book. Wizard of Oz meets baseball.
March 2, 2012
Not a homerun in my book.
Did Not Finish
April 4, 2013Sadly, the choppiness of the short chapters and the magic realism didn't work for me as much as I wanted to like this.
November 9, 2013
See my review here:
http://whatmeread.wordpress.com/tag/b...
http://whatmeread.wordpress.com/tag/b...
August 26, 2015
Not sure whether to be amazed, bemused or shocked at this book. Definitely not one of my usual books but the method of storytelling didn't allow for me to put the book down.
September 17, 2015
Kinsella is a fan of Richard Brautigan and this is very "Brautigan" like. A good mixture of the mystical, the real, with underlying satire. A good book to lose yourself in.
December 23, 2015
little too weird for me
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