The Heart in Winter

by Kevin Barry

October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city 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 balladmaker, 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 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. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .

The Heart in Winter is a savagely funny, achingly beautiful tale set in the Wild West.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Westerns, Romance, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Historical

224 pages, Hardcover

First published July 9, 2024

About the author

Kevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of two collections of short stories, and the novel City of Bohane, which was the winner of the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s 1891 in Butte, Montana, where our protagonists Tom Rourke and Polly Gillespie’s first meeting takes place, a meeting that sees them inexplicably drawn together, even though Polly is married to someone else.

This small mining town of mainly Irish immigrants is a place full of vice and debauchery, and it’s where Polly has recently exchanged vows with devout Long Anthony Harrington, owner of a copper mine. Polly soon discovers that Harrington ties up his own wrists and whips himself into a frenzy over his love of Jesus. This is an arranged marriage and it’s clear from the start that this is not going to work for Polly. However, when she meets Tom Rourke, it’s as if all the planets align, and they need each other as much as they need to draw breath!

Tom and Polly leave town on a stolen horse and with $600 stolen cash. Headed west, they hope to leave Butte and Harrington far behind, but with a manhunt underway, consisting of a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen, every step takes them closer to danger, and that’s a price they may have to pay for their forbidden love.

“There she was with Tom Rourke hand in hand in terrible love in the dead of night and the forest deep looking up to the sky and all at once yessir absolutely they could see fires on the moon. Now that there’s a suretell sign, Ding Dong said, that it’s come to a time in your lives you need to act. And the dude Ding Dong, he spoke with this like weird authority”.

The prose used throughout is quite simply beautiful, leading to some vivid imagery of Montana’s harsh winters, while the well fleshed characters leap singing and dancing from the page. A poignant, funny and ultimately entertaining tale of the Old West.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Canongate for an ARC in exchange for an honest unbiased review *

[Andy Marr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lewd, crude and really rather good.

[Michael Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

At This Moment His Heart Turned

“A western, with Irish accents,” is how Kevin Barry described his new novel, “The Heart in Winter.” In tone and setting, you can think the HBO series “Deadwood,” although told from a pair of young lovers' hearts rather than saloon owners or lawmen. This is 1891 wild west Butte, Montana, a town where 10,000 men have immigrated from Cork, Ireland to find work in the copper mines. Tough and gritty times.

A rough young degenerate poet, Tom Rourke, is spending his days drenched in alcohol and opium, unsure whether to leave town or just end things altogether. He is earning a few bucks assisting a photographer when a newly married couple come in for a portrait. Tom is floored by the bride, Polly Gillespie, and the world pinwheeled.

“...she got a portrait done and that boy was looking at her so hard it was like he just discovered eyes.”

Instantly in love, there is nothing to do but cast their fate to the wind. Tom robs a brothel, sets fire to it to cover his tracks, and the two of them journey headlong into Montana’s wilderness with only the vaguest of notions how to survive a trek to San Francisco.

Kevin Barry writes like no one else. Paragraphs may be pages long, but it flows smoothly as the poetry, the dialogue, and the humor are just the slightest bit off expectations– it all blends together and creates an odd but authentic world. Tom and Polly are unforgettable characters, too– naive lovers who have gone all in– shrugging off the knowledge that there will probably be consequences to their blind faith. They speak of death often– more of its inevitability than its threat.

I mentioned the TV series Deadwood. That is probably a good barometer if you are unsure if this is your type of reading. The violence, raw humor, and multisyllabic array of curse words will be triggers to some. “Heart in Winter” also shares many of that show’s treasures, as well.

While approaching this book with some optimism, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Ready for a western adventure, I was enchanted by the prose and the world Kevin Barry conjured. I was probably most impressed with how Tom Rourke began as such an unlikeable stain, only to develop into such a fascinating character over the course of time.

Thank you to Doubleday Books and Netgalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #TheHeartInWinter #NetGalley

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kismet
Imagine a beautifully written story about forbidden love, escaped love on the run, the harsh winter landscape of Montana in 1891, a manhunt driven by revenge from a wronged husband, cold, warm, touching, and brutal. The poetically gifted Kevin Barry pens such a literary masterpiece in The Heart in Winter.

In a language that is expressive and poignant, we are drawn to the emotions and plights of the two main characters, Polly Gillespie and Tom Rourke. Polly is a mail-order bride-of-sorts to Anthony Harrington, owner of a copper mine, who habitually self-flagellates in his religious fidelity. Unsurprisingly, Polly finds a more significant attraction to the young Tom Rourke, a loveable degenerate fond of drink, drugs, suicidal tendencies, a naïve opportunist, a photographer and a ballad maker.

“And if I met Polly in the Woods
I would kiss her if I could.
For that’s a thing that would do her good
And a cup of tay in the morn-in”

Polly and Tom establish an immediate connection, and considering their respective lives, decide to steal a horse and money and escape unprepared into the wild winter, where they must now stay ahead of a posse led by the ruthless Jago Marrak. Death joins the chase, and remarkable incidents tease us that perhaps their destiny has luck on their side, or is it just a matter of time? Polly and Tom's infatuation for each other keeps them in their own bubble, and you can’t help but hope they are given a chance to be together and explore love across a lifetime.

Kevin Barry is incredible at weaving desolation and warmth, passion and brutality, fear and love, compelling characters, and a landscape that escapes from the page. His poetic writing flows with a modulated pace that holds the reader’s attention and imagination as the story unfolds.

I want to thank Doubleday Books and NetGalley for providing a free ARC in return for an honest review. The publication date is 9 July 2024, and I highly recommend getting a copy and settling for an exceptional literary read.

[Anna Avian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kevin Barry's "The Heart in Winter" is a novel that promises much with its intriguing premise but ultimately falls short due to a series of literary missteps. The narrative follows Tom and Polly, two seemingly broken individuals who meet, fall in love almost instantly, and decide to elope, leading to an unexpected manhunt. Despite this promising setup, the novel struggles to deliver a compelling story, hindered by a problematic writing style and inconsistent pacing.

One of the most notable issues with Barry's work is his decision to eschew quotation marks for dialogue. This stylistic choice, which has become increasingly popular in contemporary fiction, often detracts from the readability of the text. In "The Heart in Winter," it renders conversations confusing and blurs the distinction between characters' thoughts and spoken words. For many readers, including myself, this choice feels like an unnecessary affectation rather than a meaningful literary device.

The writing style itself is another hurdle. Barry's prose often comes across as long-winded and disorganized, resembling rambling thoughts more than structured narrative. This approach can be alienating, making it difficult for readers to engage with the story or the characters.

The novel's pacing is equally problematic. The opening chapters rush through the crucial development of Tom and Polly's relationship. They meet, fall in love, and decide to run away together with dizzying speed, leaving no room for genuine chemistry or character development. This hurried beginning makes it hard to invest in their relationship, which is depicted with a profound lack of intimacy. We are told they are in love, but we are never shown why or how this love develops, making their connection feel superficial and unconvincing.

The middle section of the book is its strongest part. Here, Barry finds a more even pacing, and the story becomes genuinely engaging. The narrative slows down enough to allow some character exploration and development, and the stakes of the manhunt add a layer of tension that keeps readers interested. However, just as the book seems to find its footing, it falters again.

The conclusion of "The Heart in Winter" is where the novel's promise completely unravels. The ending lacks resolution and feels almost pointless, leaving readers questioning the purpose of the entire narrative journey. While a tragic ending could have provided a powerful and emotional conclusion, Barry's execution feels more like a damp squib than a poignant finale. The result is a book that ends not with a bang, but with a whimper, leaving readers dissatisfied and questioning the time invested in the story.

Furthermore, the book's description as humorous is baffling. There is little to no humor in the narrative; instead, the tone is predominantly melancholic and bleak. This mischaracterization sets up false expectations and further contributes to the overall sense of disappointment.

In summary, "The Heart in Winter" by Kevin Barry is a novel that had the potential to be compelling but ultimately fails to deliver. The lack of quotation marks, rambling prose, rushed relationship development, and unsatisfying ending all contribute to its downfall. While the middle section shows glimmers of what could have been, the book as a whole never quite reaches its potential. For readers seeking a well-crafted and engaging story, "The Heart in Winter" may prove to be a frustrating experience.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★
“Easily she was thirty. She was fair, complexion delicate. A slight crook to the nose. Eyes of wren’s-egg blue and one inclined to say hello to the other but not unattractively.”

This is a rough and rowdy story full of humour, colourful language, and unforgettable characters. It’s wild! WARNING, there is some of that language quoted in the review.

When the book opens, Captain Anthony Harrington has just met (for the first time) and wed his new wife, fresh off the train, and is taking her to a photographic studio for a formal wedding portrait.

The photographer and his assistant, Tom Rourke, have been talking about the current “salacious” photographic style of featuring women “posed back-to-front, gazing coyly over their shoulders, showing in evening gowns the bared knit blades, the length of neck, the fall of loosened hair, with the profile turned just so for the line of nose, and the tapering of waist, and suggested, just out of frame, the swell of posterior and the one true street of the new world.”

Our photographer complains about the (real), well-known Alrick Dusseau who worked in Butte, Montana, in the late 1800s.

“Oh the French rut is precisely what Mssr Dusseau is alludin’ to with his filthy bloody back-to-fronts! It’s a nod and a wink! It’s buggery and cavortion! It’s the beasts of the fields!”

The writing shifts rapidly between descriptive passages about “the fall of loosened hair” to the “filthy bloody back-to-fronts”.

The Irish are known for both poetry and colourful cursing, which I think Barry mixes well. I enjoy his descriptive prose, too.

“Captain Anthony Harrington of the Anaconda company appeared at the Crane studio with his new wife in tow. Harrington was lean and tall and cable-wiry. Hard flint eyes. A seabird feeling. A heron, or a cormorant, Tom Rourke saw him as. But there was no cruelty there. He was afraid to touch the wife.”

After the formal photo of the pair, Harrington wants one of his new wife. She poses – yes, with her back to the camera looking over her shoulder.

“The tip of her nose twitched and her eyes searched for the camera but found instead Tom Rourke’s, staring – It was at this moment that his heart turned. As Harrington settled up with the proprietor, Rourke fetched the bride’s coat and presented it and he spoke lowly, averting his eyes – My regards and congratulations to you, Mrs Harrington. She turned to him as she went, and in a hissed whisper – My name, she said, is Polly Gillespie.”

Polly is obviously a woman of ‘some experience’, and she is quickly fed up with her crazy, self-flagellating husband, who seems to have had little, if any experience.

It’s no spoiler to say she and Tom hightail it out of Butte with an idea they’ll head for California. It is freezing, they have only one horse, and they can’t see in this weather.

“They turned slowly on their heels all around and scanned the country. She gave him a particular look and couldn’t help it. They could get no purchase on the geography. It was so cold their teeth whined.

Jesus Christ, Polly.
The panic ain’t gettin us no place.
I’m not panicking. I’m just sayin …
I think there’s more light. Over that way?
Like a radiance …
Radiance my ass.

Which’d mean west. How long we been gone?

Six hours or seven. But hey Tom? I got to say it now. This ain’t got the makins of a plan.”

It sure ain’t But it’s got the makins of a wildly entertaining story with great characters they encounter . There are those who have lost themselves in the wilderness on purpose – like a lapsed priest – and those who belong thereabouts but keep being moved on, like a couple of “Métis or mixbloods or at least in that line broadly speaking.”

I grew up reading about mountain men and trappers and the mix of characters who lived in those harsh conditions. I could easily imagine Tom and Polly among them - foolish but lovable.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Canongate for a copy of #The HeartInWinter for review..

[Claire Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, Kevin Barry's writing! Every sentence is a gem, every one I could have underlined except that I listened to the audio book (read exceptionally well by the author). It's winter in 1890s Montana. Tom is an Irish wastrel, drinking his way through the cowboy saloons, earning a bit of money writing letters for men to get mail-order brides from back East, and working in a photographer's studio part time. There he meets Polly, a mail-order bride having her photograph taken with her new husband. Tom and Polly fall in love, burn down a house, steal some money and a horse and ride out with a posse on their tail. It's very wild west and great fun, and as I said, brilliantly written. It's a contender for my books of the year, the only things that could have worked better was that the two high points of the novel were not on the page, but told as reported stories, which was a shame - I would have felt more to live through them with the characters. I wonder if Barry did that for a reason. Highly recommended.

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

There she was with Tom Rourke hand in hand in terrible love in the dead of night and the forest deep looking up to the sky and all at once yessir absolutely they could see fires on the moon. Now that there’s a suretell sign, Ding Dong said, that it’s come to a time in your lives you need to act. And the dude Ding Dong he spoke with this like weird authority.

Little river was moving some ice already and long picks of it gleamed like running knives in the dark. They walked on and further on. It was such a clear night and all the stars were out. It was very cold. They sat there together in the wood all huddled up in their coats and shivered and they were miserable in love and they held on to each other for a long time out of the need and they could hear each other breathing.

There is no decision, he said, we’ve just got to be together and she didn’t have to tell him he was right about that.

This is so up my alley: I’ve said many times that I love an Irish storyteller, and as it turns out, just maybe I love a Western, too. Set in October of 1891 in Butte, Montana (“screeching and crazy and loud as the depths of hell”), The Heart of Winter is at its core a love story — star-crossed, soul-struck, forbidden love — and in the hands of Kevin Barry, this story is funny, surreal, and tense. Like a mashup of everything I loved in Days Without End, The Sisters Brothers, and The Luminaries, this novel was thoroughly entertaining, emotionally touching, and delightful in its language; I could not have asked for more. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

He thought of them now as he lay dim-eyed and roostered. It was in a mood of sadness and fun combined that he thought of the pair. My-name-Tom and my-name-Polly. They were giddy and green and always kinda jumpin. They were in love with each other too much. They were drawn by natures twined and persuadable to a terrain vague was what the Frenchman of the olden times would call it. It was to a world between worlds they were drawn. They were headed into this unknowable place without map to it nor the sense to be afraid even and they were in this regard heroical. Death hovered close by the lovers always. It was around them like a charge on the air. It was like a blue gunpowder waft. It was like electricity. They had an aspect of cool affront to life and so it was deathwards they were drawn —

Or at least that’s how the philosophic Métis was figuring things.

Approaching thirty, Irish born Tom Rourke has grown up in Montana territory: he works as an assistant photographer, writes love letters on behalf of illiterate miners, and spends his evenings drinking hard, smoking opium, and visiting his favourite sex workers. Polly Gillespie — a mail order bride who isn’t quite as young or innocent as she had portrayed herself in her letters — comes into the photography studio for a portrait with her new husband, mine boss Long Ant’ny Harrington, and one glance between Tom and Polly cements between them that they were meant to be together. As the publisher’s blurb states (skip this if you want to go in blind like I did), the pair runs away together but Harrington hires some rough “Jacks” to hunt them down, and what follows is half romance/half tense and atmospheric adventure story.

It was hard to choose quotes for this review because the magic comes in long passages, rather than pithy bites, but I did find the whole thing magical. The dialogue is snappy, the setting is gorgeously rendered, the characters (and especially the supporting characters) are unique individuals, and the plot is unpredictable. The romance is believable, but over everything, is a layer of fate and enchantment and access to otherworldly powers:

She leaned in close then with her claw to his chest and whispered some crazy stuff and he laughed and he laughed harder again the stranger the words got. It was like she was speaking in the tongue but it had no connection with any god you might think of. She just let it come from inside. She didn’t even think about it. These were words that came from a place that was deep inside. A place that was before our world and time. That was a deepdown place and forest-like. And he laughed and shook a bit and she let the words come with her claw to his chest and she was raking him pretty good. She let him know they both came from this same place. We can be in it still, she said. We can be in it whenever we need to be and we can always talk to each other there. He was on top of her then biting at her neck and breast and they surely understood each other and the whole thing was just the kind of luck that don’t even come once in a lifetime for most.

Some paragraphs took reading through two or three times before I could make sense of them, and I don’t know if you’d call this writing style heavily ironic, post-modern, or straight-up surrealism, but I was thoroughly entertained, intellectually engaged, and emotionally touched throughout. This may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it suited my own precisely. My favourite by Barry so far.

[Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Western following an Irishman? Star-crossed lovers? Lyrical writing? Coen Brothers-esque humor? Sign me up.

Tom Rourke is a layabout and letter writer for his fellow Irish emigres to Butte, Montana circa 1891. He waxes poetically and wins the hearts of women back east to come marry his brethren, while he remains destitute and lovelorn in the dusty mining town.

Polly Gillespie arrives by train one day to marry one of Rourke’s lonely compatriots, but fate has other plans for these two.

When the two set out for San Francisco, Gillespie’s scorned husband sends some trackers on their tail and sets off a classic Western caper that can only end in either heartbreak or happiness.

I admired Barry’s writing from the get-go. It’s playful and snarky, but with a ton of heart. Rourke is a sympathetic, though sometimes just pathetic, character that begins to find his way in the world when he falls for Polly. And she, though remains mostly a mystery, comes alive on the page.

Though the book lost me a bit in the middle with POV switches, I also did appreciate how the author gave us a chorus of voices and made some creative storytelling/narrative choices here and there. It took this from a cliche Western storyline to something more profound. And I loved the ending!

[Trudie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. Why am I not reading more Kevin Barry ?

I had read Kevin Barry’s 2019 Booker nominated Night boat to Tangier and admired it at the time but his latest novel has turned me into an avid fan.

The Heart in Winter is essentially a Western, set in Butte, Montana in the 1890s but that description does it a disservice. It’s a writing masterclass in building atmosphere and character, it also contains some delightfully inventive swearing.

The Guardian review nailed it for me with this description:

“ 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 “

Certainly one of my top reads of the year so far - 5 stars.🌟

[Peter Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He said are you happy where you are right now? When you're here I am, she said, and right then she knew that they were falling."

This lyrical tale of star-crossed lovers is set in the Wild West. The Butte, Montana of 1891 is a lawless cesspool populated by vagabonds and ne'er-do-wells, none fitting that description better than Tom Rourke. Tom is a drunk and a dope fiend, though he does have some poetry in his heart, writing love letters to prospective wives on behalf of local uncultured gold miners in exchange for a few bob. He also assists a local portrait photographer until a day arrives that changes everything. Mining boss Anthony Harrington enters the studio with Polly Gillespie, his new wife, and when Tom sees her he is undone. Making it his mission to win her affection is easier than expected, as she is no angel herself and her husband is a bore with a disturbing line in self-flagellation. The pair decide to steal some money and head for California, but Harrington won't be made a fool of so easy, and he hires some heavies to track them down and bring Polly back.

There is nothing new in the subject matter of this novel - the Wild West is a familiar setting, and the notion of doomed lovers has been around since Romeo and Juliet. What makes it come alive is Kevin Barry's magical prose. His dark, playful humour and knack for a memorable phrase elevate this story into something special. It brought to mind that wonderful TV series Deadwood: beautiful, almost Shakespearean dialogue emanating from the roughest of folk in a hellhole that God seems to have forsaken. Though they appear to have luck on their side initially, we know that it probably won't end well for Tom and Polly, and can't help reading on to find out. Existing fans of Barry will be delighted with this gripping, chaotic adventure and it also deserves to bring him a new legion of followers.

[Lynn Peterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not at all what I expected when I picked it up. It says “funny,” but I don’t think there was one funny paragraph in this book. It’s a sad melancholy book about two people who meet and instantly fall in love but she’s a mail order bride wed to someone else so they leave and are hunted down. There was a few moments I really enjoyed the writing but ultimately this book was not for me.

[Tom Mooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely classic Kevin Barry. Summoning the ghost of Mark Twain, he turns his grandiose campfire storytelling to the American West.

Of course it's glorious.

[Emma.catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another WIN for the Irish authors ☘️

🌟🌟🌟🌟

Kevin Barry’s latest novel is set in Montana, America, 1890. The city of Butte is rich on copper mines and crowded with hard-living Irish immigrants. This is where we meet Tom Rourke, a young poet/ballad-maker but he is also deep in dope and drink. And just when he feels like giving up on life (literally), Polly Gillespie arrives into town…

This is a romantic tale of two young lovers during one hard winter.

I have to admit, the whole way through the first chapter I was for giving up on this book. I had no idea what was going on and the writing seemed so disjointed. HOWEVER, as chapter 2 struck, the chord changed dramatically and I fell hard for this book; just as hard and quickly as Tom and Polly fell for each other.

‘He said are you happy where you are right now? When you’re here, I am, she said, and Wright then she knew that they were falling.’ ♥️

‘And there she was with Tom Rourke hand in hand in terrible love in the dead of night and the forest deep looking up to the sky.’ 🥰

‘There is no decision, he said, we’ve just got to be together and she didn’t have to tell him he was right about that.’ ♥️

Kevin’s writing throughout the book is incredibly poetic and lyrical (despite the strong language used). It is an interesting one to categorise: a ‘western’ full of Irish immigrants…it is incredibly unique and highly entertaining. From the second chapter onwards, I was deeply invested in their love affair and couldn’t put this short story down for long. I had to know what the next part of their wild journey would bring.

Their wild adventure took them off across the country, through the badlands of Montana and Idaho; their romance burning just as wildly as their journey. However, it was soon apparent that they weren’t alone…someone was closing in fast. But this just sets fire to their tracks and, with nothing to lose, they continue toward California- to the sea. Will they be caught along the way?

Kevin certainly had me roped in with writing like no other I have seen before. He has a unique style and way with words. Long paragraphs lending themselves with ease to a free flowing, fast paced storyline. Tom and Polly are both unforgettable characters, clearly depicted and naive at their core. They seem to think they are invincible, which of course they are not. They shrug off all consequences to their blind love and faith; speaking frequently about God and death.

I had no idea what to expect from this book, but it delivered. Kevin is a master storyteller, who poetically depicts the purity, and strong will of the human heart ♥️


⚠️ Very strong language used throughout the book!

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Novels need to be horrible and messy to give a sense of real, lived life. You can’t be afraid to go nuts on the page. That’s what Irish writing did to establish itself in the early part of the twentieth century. It went fucking mad on the page. People like Flann O’Brien and Joyce and Beckett, they weren’t afraid to really take risks, and that’s what you want to see happening to keep it alive and to keep it going.”
~ Kevin Barry in Literary Hub

And so Kevin Barry went fucking mad on the page.

Kevin Barry went to Butte, Montana and wrote the snow-hushed ballad of Tom Rourke and Polly Gillespie, doomsday lovers fleeing the blackened skies of the mining town in the early 1890’s.

Kevin Barry sat at his desk and summoned all of them around the campfire: James Joyce and Walt Whitman, Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven”, Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven”, Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad”, Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, “Jeremiah Johnson” and “Bonnie and Clyde”, Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” and Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America”, Woodie Guthrie and a young Bob Dylan teetering at the edge of electricity.

Kevin Barry gathered the fools, the lowlifes, the drunks, the dreamers, the gangsters and the zealots, the poets and the dopeheads, Irish, Swede, German, Italian, French Canadian, Eastern European, Native American and Chinese. All of them tumbleweed in the feverish dream of Manifest Destiny. All of them writing and rewriting the myths of the West at the bar, one drink at a time.

Kevin Barry plucked his Great American-Irish Novel out of the ether after being haunted by it for more than two decades. An impossibly gorgeous tale of Americana, slick like an arrow, aiming straight at the heart.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The eggs went down controversially. The coffee began to straighten the affair. He rolled a smoke to find the hands were passable steady by this stage. Once more and gauntly he considered his situation. He wrote songs for the bars and letters for the lonesome. He was assistant to the photographer Lonegan Crane, a lunatic, of Leytonstone, East London, originally. His days had been passing with no weight to them but he knew now that fate would soon arrest him.

The Heart of Winter is Kevin Barry's fourth novel after

His memorable debut City of Bohane - a steam-punk graphic novel, but where the pictures were painted in words. This showcased Barry's Joycean love of the auditory power of language - with prose that almost demanded to be read out loud. The most memorable parts of the novel were the highly visual descriptions of the characters and the outlandish costumes that they wear (and which they change on a daily basis), although the plot itself took rather a back seat.

Beatlebone - which required rather more interest in John Lennon that I had, and I was unconvinced by the metafictional but rather artificial authorial intervention in the text

Night Boat to Tangier, a more contemporary and realist version of City of Bohane, although still trademark Barry - who has said "realist literary fiction is, of course, the hoariest (and dullest) of all the genres" - highlights including the Sexy Beast bickering between the two main gangsters Maurice and Charlie, and the simple but powerful backstory.

Barry himself described City of Bohane as "a weird retro-fitted future-Western, with lots of gratuitous swearing, hideous violence, perverse sex and powerful opiates", which rather overstated the gratuity/violence/sex, and The Heart in Winter is a more conventional Western, of the Celtic variety, sitting somewhere between City of Bohane and Night Boat to Tangier in style.

As always the prose is the main attraction - this description of two characters' and their clothes could be lifted straight from City of Bohane:

The pair had a pretty natty mountain pirate air about them. Janeaux was wiry and compact like a strong prodigious boy and wore a small hooped gold earring in the left ear and had black, black eyes under a stovepipe hat tipped to a cheeky and defiant lean and long hair and boots of pointed toe and coloured rags for scarves tied about the neck and wrists. Some silver chains. Morasse stood skinny as a pipecleaner more than six feet tall and wore a pair of fine duck pants he was proud of and a fur hat out of the Quebecois reaches and long hair and much of a similar motley to his companion in terms of fanciful rag-scarves and a musical laugh that sounded like a flute of some rudimentary kind and was sounded often.

And this from a bar in the copper mining town of Butte, Montana ("The most Irish town in America" per the Irish Times), where the novel is set, in the late 19th century, amongst the Irish diaspora:

Who would be the next to join them? A fine morningtime question to chew over in Butte at that hour of our desperate lives, and the Hibernian brethren bowed their heads to it sombrely. In sympathy with them Fat Con moved like a sweet old ma behind the counter. He cut off the sausage links and the strips of bacon and flung them with artistic expression to the grill. He cut white loaves on the slicer and chopped the liver into neat hanks with a murderer’s relish. He was a man in his time. He was alive to his place and task. He swung his great belly from grill to counter and back again and there was grace to it. Dankly his occult coffee simmered and there were canteen pots of tay stewed black as porter. Dead bloodshot eyes sat in a row for him along the high stools and every last set of them was beholden. He rendered the fats and toasted the breads. It was a pale November sky beyond on North Main Street and Con Sullivan cracked his eggs with princely flourishes. He was dainty about his work as a jewel-maker. An icy gust of the wind assaulted the room when some big fool eejit stepped in and left the door wide open for the North Main view.

Con Sullivan roared–Ah bang out the fucken thing wouldn’t ya and don’t have us slaughtered altogether!
It was Stephen Devane, the sheriff, who stepped back and closed the door gently.
Didn’t see it was yourself, Dev.

This is another great read, although for me not to the standard of Night Boat to Tangier, whose contemporary setting gave it more political resonance, and which gave the two main characters a more compelling backstory, here hinted at but dialled down for more on-page action. And I am perhaps suffering slightly dimishing returns from Barry's work - it would be great to see him do something very different next.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fugitive lovers take an all-too-brief journey through rugged backcountry, resisting the forces of a bleak, forlorn, and violent society. Stunningly good writing throughout, as is always the case with Kevin Barry.

Equal parts upper and downer, with hallucinogens tossed into the mix. So - yes - "it was drugs" a la The Tournament of Books guidelines.

4.5 stars

Fact Check: Tom and Polly could not have seen large flocks of starlings wheeling in the sky. There were only 100 of them released into NYC in 1890, and their later generations didn't even reach Montana or Idaho until the 1940s.

[Ace · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my kind of love story. Frantic. Blind. Impossible.

[Taste_in_Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barry writes in his typical high on testosterone, full of crude language and fast-paced writing style.

Tom Rourke is living the life of a loner, no family of his own, and not big on living either. Until Polly Gillespie comes into his workplace to get a picture taken...with her new husband!

His heart turns as their eyes meet, and he knows right there he's a goner. They elope anyway, knowing the whole town will be chasing after them. But they're drunk on love and adventure and want to get the best out of their love story even if their days together are numbered.

It's a cat and mouse chase with a good dose of love adventure, tragedy, and philosophy thrown in.

It's a pretty good one. However, it doesn't quite pack the power punch the sensational Night Boat to Tangier did.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Heart in winter reads like a river-sometimes slow and meandering, other times swift, and breaking over the rocks. And always beautiful scenery. All the time I was absolutely engrossed in this story of mad love.
Kevin Barry has caught a vision of the old west, and transformed it into literature of the highest order. Highest possible recommendation.

[Alan (The Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovers in a Dangerous Time
Review of the NetGalley eBook ARC downloaded June 7, 2024 of the Penguin Random House / Knopf Canada hardcover / eBook and the Random House Audio audiobook to be released July 9, 2024.

This was a propulsive western saga with two star-crossed lovers making a break for a new life out of the mining town of Butte, Montana in 1891. Tom Rourke is an Irish immigrant who could not cut it in the mines and now works as a photographer's assistant while doping and drinking in his spare time while writing ballads and the occasional letter for illiterate hopeful husbands in search of a mail-order bride. Into his life walks Polly Gillespie, the newly wed wife of mining captain Anthony Harrington and an infatuation soon follows which is returned when Polly is repulsed by her new husband's self-abasement rituals.

A plan of escape unfolds and soon the lovers are on the run with a stolen horse and the savings from a rooming house. But Harrington enlists a rather perverse posse of three Cornishmen to make pursuit. The lovers carelessly linger on their road to San Francisco when they come upon an idyllic abandoned cabin, allowing the posse to close in. Tom is beaten and left for dead while Polly is abducted. Now Tom is the one in pursuit to attempt to save his new love or die trying.

This was one crazed adventure with a compulsive flow to the words, often written in a rough frontier language in a mix of old world balladry and new world slang. It was impossible to stop reading as the chapters unfolded with cliffhangers which then continued with the further suspense building through flashbacks and flashforwards. The mark of a true 5-star is when you simply have to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next.


A view of Butte, Montana in the late 19th century. Image sourced from the Times Literary Supplement.

Soundtrack
I immediately thought of the Bruce Cockburn song "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" from the Stealing Fire (1984) album. A 2011 live performance of the song can be seen on YouTube here.

Trivia and Links
There is no mention of it in the Acknowledgements but I have to imagine that the escaping lovers theme must have been at least partially inspired by the 10th century Irish mythology of the lovers Diarmuid and Gráinne which is also considered to be the basis for the later 12th century Tristan and Isolde story.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Barry’s prose is so enchanting that it takes my breath away. Like a master magician, he summons words from thin air and presents them to his readers with a flourish. He could write a city phone book, and it would sing! I went into this, his latest novel, prepared to be bowled over. He did not disappoint.

For the first time, this much-awarded Irish writer sets his novel in America, specifically, the city of Butte, Montana, in 1891. Butte is filled with hard-living Irish immigrant workers, one of whom is Tom Rourke, a ballad writer and sometime-photographer. He has the heart of a poet, and yet there’s a darkness that lives within him, which manifests in drinking, doping, and even suicide ideation.

Then he meets Polly Gillespie, who is a seasoned mail-order bride of sorts to the old owner of the copper mine, Long Anthony Harrington, who ties up his own wrists and whips himself into a frenzy over his love of Jesus. Not exactly a match made in heaven. When Tom and Polly exchange a look, the earth moves. They steal a horse and escape to the badland.

Barry writes, “It was to a world between worlds they were drawn. They were headed into this unthinkable place without a map to it nor the sense to be afraid even, and they were in this regard heroically. Death hovered close to the lovers always. It was around the like a charge o the air. It was like a blue gunpower waft. It was like electricity. They had an aspect of cool affront to life and so it was deathwards they were drawn.”

Heart in Winter weaves together – seamlessly, like magic – a lyrical tale of a bad-ass doper and his far-from-innocent lover, a Western adventure tale of gun-for-hire “Jacks” seeking frontier justice on behalf of Harrington, and a treatise about the choices we make and how these choices get rearranged as Tom and Polly lean into their inevitable fate. The patois of the badlands is channeled seamlessly through Barry’s writing as his characters leap from the page.

I owe a world of thanks to Doubleday Publishers, who provided me with early access to one of my favorite contemporary writers in exchange for an honest review. I’d give this six stars if I could!

[Tania · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Think Natural Born Killers set in 1890s Montana. The writing is exquisite and the story wild and entertaining. I should have loved this, but for some reason I only liked it. That said, I will definitely try something else by Kevin Barry.

The story: This rip-roaring western chronicles the misadventures of an opium-smoking Irishman. After he meets Polly Gallagher, a mail-order bride from Chicago, the two trade lines of poetry and begin a passionate and chaotic affair.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

To inhabit Butte, Montana in 1891 is to live in a place where violence and lawlessness is rife. Many immigrants have been drawn to the town – from Ireland, Cornwall, Wales and beyond – by the prospect of work in the area’s copper mines, or maybe even of striking it rich themselves. It’s a tough life and for many the only way to get through it is with alcohol or drugs supplied by Chinese traders, known as Celestials.

Tom Rourke is a drifter, drunk and opium addict who ekes out a living writing songs, love letters for illiterate miners hoping to attract a bride, and assisting in a photographic studio. It’s how he meets Polly Gillespie, the new bride of mine captain, Anthony Harrington. Polly has her own troubled past and soon discovers her new life as Harrington’s wife is going to bring neither happiness nor fulfilment. There’s a kind of tragic inevitability that Tom and Polly – both flawed, damaged individuals – will be drawn to each other. In fact, Tom has always himself believed he won’t make a good end – ‘What he reckons is you was born to a dark star’ – and has thought about hastening that end. Polly is a survivor, someone who can reinvent herself – and has done. She perhaps comes closest to being her true self with Tom.

In the hands of the author the landscape of 19th century Montana is simultaneously unforgiving but full of beauty. ‘Winter by now was truly the sour landlord of the forest.’ The characters leap off the page whether that’s the fanatically religious Harrington, punishing himself for his own lustful thoughts, or Jago Marrak, a giant of a man and the leader of the trio hired to track down the runaways. There are passages of wonderful prose such as in the chapter entitled ‘Nightmusic’.

‘About this time it became the common perception that trains sounded lonesome, especially in the hours of darkness, and you could not deny it looking across the yards at Pocatello Junction on that rainy December night as the Utah & Northern went out for Salt Lake City and left a long forlorn calling in its wake. The rain came slantwise and harder now across the sheds and the yards and the depot.. There was the distant roll of a piano line as it played in counterpoint to the night train’s fading call. There was some distant jeering also. The quartermoon climbed by slow degrees through the cloudbank to add to the night’s yearnful air and still the beating of the rain came down on the cars of the resting stock and somewhere in the town the jags of a woman’s screeching were cut short.’

The Heart in Winter is a enthralling, skilfully crafted combination of love story and adventure story. I was completely captivated by Tom and Polly’s story which, although you suspect is doomed from the start, you can’t help hoping will turn out differently. ‘…And wasn’t it a remarkable turn of events that showed love and death they co-exist in our violent and sentimental world. They might even depend one on the other.’

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why the fuck haven't I read Kevin Barry before? What an idiot. 

I LOVED this. Barry is an absolute genius, a tricksy, mad little wordsmith with poetry coming out of his ears. There are endless lines I could quote, phrases that had me chuckling away to myself, laughing out loud, reading again and again in awe. 

The Heart in Winter is set in Butte Montana in the late 1800s, and follows Tom Rourke and Polly Gillespie as the two begin an epic love affair, setting off across the plains on a stolen horse. You might think its nothing new, but it's all in the telling - Barry's prose sings through the pages with so much life (and a lot of swearing). 

A genuine perfect 5 star read where I wouldn't change a single thing. I hope someone makes this into a film. 

Now excuse me whilst I go and read everything Kevin Barry has ever written.

[Jaleena von Borstel · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 32%. I could not stand the writing style, very hard to follow and stay engaged

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t get past the first chapter. I’m perplexed by all the glowing reviews.

[Nadine in California · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, the ideal western is a gritty, even harsh story, told with humanity and compassion, laced through with humor and held up by a steel spine that keeps it from becoming sentimental or maudlin. True Grit is my north star for this, and now Kevin Barry has done it too. Colum McCann's review calls Barry's language "...as close to song as literature will ever get."
The story, the characters all grabbed at my heart and my throat - but really, it all comes out of the language. Every page has gems, but here are a few examples

The very first paragraph in the book is a full taste of the writing. The book starts like a play, with a clown character crossing the stage to set the scene, then disappears forever:

"On Wyoming Street in the evening a patent Irish stumbled by, some crazy old meathead in a motley of rags and filthy buckskin wild tufts of hair sticking out the ears, the eyes burning now like hot stars, now clasped shut in a kind of ecstasy, and he lurched and tottered on broken boots like a nightmare overgrown child, like some massive obliterated eejit child, and he sang out his wares in a sweet clear lilting -
Pot-ay-toes?
Hot po-tay-toes?
Hot pot-ah-toes a pe-nny?

His verse swung across the raw naked street and back again, and was musical, but he had no potatoes at all."

A sky grows dark: The last of the light took an ink an thickened.

Death obsession is almost a hobby for these characters and never far from mind, as in this pithy dialogue between protagonist Tom and a bartender (who calls him, generically, Christian):

You're sufferin, Christian.
I am, yeah.
You're not right in yourself.
Not for a long while past.
You can see it comin maybe?
I think I can do, yeah.
But sure you been waitin on it your whole life.
I have in some regards, I'd say. Yes.

And I've never seen a narrator describe and discard a minor character so efficiently by a quick break in the fourth wall: Concede here that she was a character straight out of the briars and we can move on from it.

I could quote half the book, but I'll stop myself after this last little masterpiece, a description of the 'morning after' for an old Scotch bounty hunter:

His noggin end was a tower of screeching bats, as of some haunted West County moor; his stomach was a failing metropolis; his vision was blurred and flickering. He stumbled and groaned and bounced from the walls. He found his boots if only by the touch and wept his way into them. He staggered to the pisspot and aimed for it out of some remnant delicacy. He relieved himself fully to the roar of oceanic applause. He stood gormlessly then with drained apparatus to hand and tasted the sourness of his life - a melancholic, slave to the infinite sadness, he wondered if he might get through the day without opening his throat. Fuck it, he could try."

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kevin Barry has written a Western because of course he has. It’s very funny until it’s heartbreakingly sad. Barry’s use of language and vernacular gives his writing an electric quality as you feel the synapses in your brain being fired to make new connections. It’s exciting and fun. I honestly do not know what I’d do without Irish fiction (even when it’s set in Montana).

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barry gets better as he ages, so much so that here, almost every sentence is a work of art. Great books invite the reader to take a quote, like a photo, something to marvel at and remember the book by for years to come, in this, every paragraph bears such a phrase.

Barry writes short, striking sentences penetrating and indelible in their ferocity. There’s a mix of humour and tragedy in his three novels to date, and that is very much evident in this, his fourth.

This is set in America’s 19th-century Wild West, and concerns Tom Rourke, an Irish expat, who has settled in the mining town of Butte, Montana. He fancies himself as a balladeer, though he writes love letters for unmarried men to potential brides to help pay the rent. Complications arise when he meets, and takes to, Polly, recently betrothed to the mine’s owner.

Under the influence of love they flee on horseback, along with the contents of the boarding-house safe, heading to San Francisco, where everything will be better.

There will be many such summaries as mine above, and talk of the novel being a romance, or a travelogue, but those things find it difficult to describe the huge amount of fun and entertainment reaped in reading this wonderful novel.

Life is clearly hard in America in 1891, but Barry describes it with an impish joviality - an assault to the reader’s mind of language and imagery that will long remain in the memory.


A couple of clip’s…
of the Reverend..

He smiled broadly. He was covered in the small bites as will afflict a ginger-completed man in the out country. His was a pale skin mottled and pecked-looking. His eyes were glossy on a haul of hard-won Jesus-love. His hair was truly a one-off. The burial mound was at careful length alluded to and shyly questioned by his visitors. The Reverend sighed and nodded, and there was a great sadness evident. He had just the evening previous buried his one true friend of the mortal plane, he confided.

and of a boy Rourke and Polly encounter..

They dismounted outside the Perpetual Hotel. They took down the pack. A pale white-haired boy maybe with a touch of albino or Swede to him stepped out from the hotel and took the measure of them.
He was about fourteen years old and solemn with the trials of it. He considered his boots at some length and nodded slowly as though he was coming to terms with the situation.