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The Winter in Anna
The story of an unlikely and transformative connection forged between a young journalist and a woman whose past holds a terrible secret.
A young man, Eric, drops out of college and lucks into a job with a smalltown newspaper where he meets Anna, a few years older than him. Her story will both haunt and inspire him for the rest of his life. The Winter in Anna unfolds around a romance that almost was and a meditation on what constitutes a life well-lived. Set in a remote North Dakota community in the last days before the Internet, the story centers on this relationship. It is narrated by Eric as he looks back on their days together and struggles to reconcile his memories with what he has since learned about Anna.
Opening with a suicide and ending at a wedding, The Winter in Anna is filled with moments of tenderness, even as it slowly reveals an unbearable tragedy at the heart of a quietly defiant life.
A young man, Eric, drops out of college and lucks into a job with a smalltown newspaper where he meets Anna, a few years older than him. Her story will both haunt and inspire him for the rest of his life. The Winter in Anna unfolds around a romance that almost was and a meditation on what constitutes a life well-lived. Set in a remote North Dakota community in the last days before the Internet, the story centers on this relationship. It is narrated by Eric as he looks back on their days together and struggles to reconcile his memories with what he has since learned about Anna.
Opening with a suicide and ending at a wedding, The Winter in Anna is filled with moments of tenderness, even as it slowly reveals an unbearable tragedy at the heart of a quietly defiant life.
254 pages, Hardcover
First published January 17, 2017
About the author
Reed Karaim
10 books26 followersReed Karaim is the author of The Winter in Anna and If Men Were Angels, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. He lives in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 158 reviews
June 20, 2017
4.5
A quiet novel set in a small town, that involves the suicide of Anna, and the memories of her by a young man named Eric who had become friends with her.
The book goes back and forth to Eric now, as a father and husband, and of Eric then, as a young 20 yr old, who got a job as editor of small weekly newspaper that Anna worked at also.
Anna is a mother of two with secrets that slowly surface.
This is the story of how her life affected Eric's.
Beautiful writing!
A quiet novel set in a small town, that involves the suicide of Anna, and the memories of her by a young man named Eric who had become friends with her.
The book goes back and forth to Eric now, as a father and husband, and of Eric then, as a young 20 yr old, who got a job as editor of small weekly newspaper that Anna worked at also.
Anna is a mother of two with secrets that slowly surface.
This is the story of how her life affected Eric's.
Beautiful writing!
June 13, 2017
This book was utterly exquisite and moving, yet told with such gorgeous simplicity.
"We would like to think we will recognize the people who come to matter to us at first sight, but of course that's absurd. They often slip into the corners of our lives, unnoticed, then taken for granted, until one day, if we are lucky, we see them anew with startled comprehension, and think, There is my best friend, or There is the woman I love, or There is someone who saved me."
In a split second, Eric Valery decides to drop out of college just before he graduates, and gets a job as a reporter at a newspaper in small-town Shannon, North Dakota. It is there he meets Anna, a fellow employee, whose outer calm belies a life full of disappointment, pain, and emotions, the depths of which no one truly knows.
It's not long before the two strike up a close friendship, and Eric begins to understand there is so much more to life than what he thinks and has experienced, understands what life is like for those who truly struggle. Anna, too, learns from this friendship, as she gets to experience Eric's confidence and idealism, and feels buoyed by his enthusiasm for the small town in which they live and work.
Little by little, Anna begins to trust Eric, and reveals to him the secret pain she carries with her. She teaches him that there is so much more to life than what he sees in front of him, but all of it—moments both happy and sad—are what makes life richer, even if it is difficult. And as Eric faces his own sadness and his own indecision, he realizes that we cannot always choose the circumstances we're handed, but what we do with those circumstances is what makes a life.
The Winter in Anna is Eric's reflections on his relationship with Anna years later, as he remembers the person who perhaps meant more to him than anyone, although the realization of that fact may not have come right away. It's a portrait of a young man with his whole life ahead of him, who finds someone that both directly and obliquely changes the course of his life.
"No one had seemed to defy the idea that our future is written in our past more than Anna."
There was so much I loved about this book. I found the characters so fascinating, so complex, and even though one key plot point is revealed in the first few pages of the book, my love for these characters kept me reading every single word. Reed Karaim infuses his book with such emotion and so many life lessons, and his prose is absolutely gorgeous. Even his imagery is poetic. Take this example:
"The afternoons swell with diffused light, the trees are kaleidoscopes, the sky cracks gently along the edge, and all the colors spill into early evening. It's a time when the unexpected perfection of a particular day can stop you in midstride, when your thoughts slow down to take on a renewed clarity and you make a series of small resolutions to do better from here on out as you turn up your collar against the approaching winter."
I'm always loathe to compare writers since everyone is so unique, but Karaim's style and lyricism reminds me of Kent Haruf and Leif Enger. I read this book on a plane ride and just fell in love with it. It's one of those times I wish I was reading the actual book instead of a digital copy, so I could tell people on the plane how special this book was. (I'm usually not interested in making conversation with people on planes so I can concentrate on reading, so this is a big deal.)
Some may find the pacing a little slow, but I really thought The Winter in Anna was one of those special books you hope to find every so often, and you don't want it to end, nor do you want to lose the memories of these characters.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
July 8, 2017
The book opens with a shocking entry in a newspaper. Our narrator is Eric, now an older man, married with a daughter and the article will take him back many years. A time when as a young twenty year old he drops out of college, leaves Minnesota for the small town of Shannon in North Dakota. He finds a job at a weekly newspaper as a sports writer and here he meets Anna. She is ten years or so older than him but he is captivated by the many different aspects of her personality. The deep sadness he sees in her eyes, her wonderful writing and the fantastic photographs she is able to capture. He will spend only a short time, less than two years here but Anna will impact his life in ways he never expected.
Beautiful prose, haunting, melancholic, the kind of quiet story that makes you put it down just so you can think for few moments on what you just read. A special book with so much meaning. About relationships, friendships, what newspapers have meant to is as a society. How much we are losing by the closing of small newspapers, reading the words, holding them in our hands, not the same on the internet, too cold and impersonal. Small towns and what these newspapers have meant to them.
But in the forefront is the friendship that develops between Eric and Anna. Her secret sadness and why she is affected so much in winter, a profound and devastating revelation. I believe most of us have someone in our past, someone we lost contact with that meant a great deal. Maybe even changed our lives, made us realize things we couldn't see. Someone we never can forget, remember with love, fondness and regret. The magic of books is that sometimes they cause us to remember, this one did for me.
ARC from publisher.
Beautiful prose, haunting, melancholic, the kind of quiet story that makes you put it down just so you can think for few moments on what you just read. A special book with so much meaning. About relationships, friendships, what newspapers have meant to is as a society. How much we are losing by the closing of small newspapers, reading the words, holding them in our hands, not the same on the internet, too cold and impersonal. Small towns and what these newspapers have meant to them.
But in the forefront is the friendship that develops between Eric and Anna. Her secret sadness and why she is affected so much in winter, a profound and devastating revelation. I believe most of us have someone in our past, someone we lost contact with that meant a great deal. Maybe even changed our lives, made us realize things we couldn't see. Someone we never can forget, remember with love, fondness and regret. The magic of books is that sometimes they cause us to remember, this one did for me.
ARC from publisher.
November 20, 2016
There is a sadness so thick , right from the first page when I learned the fate of this woman named Anna. Even though I know what happened to her in the first paragraph, getting through the story to know why and what took her to that place was one of the reasons I couldn't put this book down. But it was much more. I knew immediately this would be my kind book . It was the writing, the simple phrases filled with meaning and immediate images , the quiet tone, something about the narrative, the narrator, how affecting the language is . I found myself rereading phrases , sentences, complete paragraphs. After reading the first two chapters before bed the other night , I started the book from the beginning the next day. Right from the beginning I knew how deeply affected I would be.
Eric tells us Anna's story and how he met her when he was a young man , when he had his first job as an editor of a small town newspaper in Shannon , ND . It's about this small town life , a place where everyone knows everything about everybody with a few exceptions. Anna was one of the exceptions. Not everyone knew everything about her until she forges a friendship with Eric while they are both working on the paper. It's about this friendship , maybe love . Eric even in his later years as he tells the story is not even sure . What is abundantly clear is that this is a relationship built on trust , the deepest kind of trust that allows one to share secrets of the past that are just too tragic , too heavy to carry alone. As the narrative unfolds, we gradually come to learn about Anna's burden as she parcels out her past to Eric .
There's a nostalgia here for a different time when newspapers meant something different than today . There's some regret too on Eric's part as he tells the story later in his life with a different perspective than his twenty year old self, now as a father who knows now what unconditional love is. This is one of those lovely, sad stories that will rip your heart at times but then gives you what it takes to perhaps slowly mend it. I loved everything about this book .
A special thanks to Diane S because without her moving review, I would have missed this book.
I received an ARC of this book from W.W. Norton & Company through Netgalley.
June 7, 2017
Just lost my entire review removing a 2nd read!!
This story opens up with a shockingly cruel and harsh suicide of a woman named Anna, who succumbed to her own darkness - her own winter.
This is a reflective narrative as recalled by Eric, whom worked alongside Anna for a few years in the isolation of a mid-western town at a local newspaper. A friendship that grew in the small town of loneliness. This is his attempt of reconciling her death with the memories of the woman whom he knew. A woman who quietly navigated her life and shared sparingly, but deeply. The unravelling of her story in splices in time when she gave him glimpses into her sad past. How despite her darkness, she hadn't fully surrendered to the depression. The things in her life she valued - her children, her work, her friendship. But it wasn't enough to heal the hurt and so she made the decision leave her 'winter’ eventually, to stop the pain.
This one will leave you with a heaviness and sadness.
Hauntingly sorrowful; the prose exquisite. 4.5*****Bumping to a 5 as this one will stay with me for a while.
This story opens up with a shockingly cruel and harsh suicide of a woman named Anna, who succumbed to her own darkness - her own winter.
This is a reflective narrative as recalled by Eric, whom worked alongside Anna for a few years in the isolation of a mid-western town at a local newspaper. A friendship that grew in the small town of loneliness. This is his attempt of reconciling her death with the memories of the woman whom he knew. A woman who quietly navigated her life and shared sparingly, but deeply. The unravelling of her story in splices in time when she gave him glimpses into her sad past. How despite her darkness, she hadn't fully surrendered to the depression. The things in her life she valued - her children, her work, her friendship. But it wasn't enough to heal the hurt and so she made the decision leave her 'winter’ eventually, to stop the pain.
This one will leave you with a heaviness and sadness.
Hauntingly sorrowful; the prose exquisite. 4.5*****Bumping to a 5 as this one will stay with me for a while.
September 15, 2017
The narrator in this book is Eric (sometimes called Ricky). He ended up in the town Anna was living in and after a brief stint as sportswriter at the local newspaper where Anna also worked, he was promoted to Editor. This sounds all mighty and fine, but it is a wee town and the dark comedy of putting together a weekly newspaper is a counterpoint to the fact that no matter how small the place, people’s lives are just as big and important and filled with human emotion and drama as anywhere else.
Anna is older than Eric by about 10 years and supports herself and two young children on her meager salary. The age difference is inconsequential when it comes to their work together. In retrospect, Eric recalls many times where his talk veered off into the pompous and presumptuous, but it also seemed to console Anna in some strange way. Perhaps it was because her own life ten years before was so far from ideal or idealistic; Eric’s pontifications may have acted as a balm and a reminder of her secret self in her previous decade. Eric also experiences a loss in his family and in her own way, Anna helps him through that time as well.
This is a quietly dramatic book, cinematic at times, and there is an undercurrent running throughout whose name is Tragedy. We know from the first paragraph that Anna commits suicide in a most horrific and painful way. But who is Anna? How did her life come to this place of final commitment to ending her life on this sphere of existence? For better or worse, through tragedy and triumph, this is her story.
Anna is older than Eric by about 10 years and supports herself and two young children on her meager salary. The age difference is inconsequential when it comes to their work together. In retrospect, Eric recalls many times where his talk veered off into the pompous and presumptuous, but it also seemed to console Anna in some strange way. Perhaps it was because her own life ten years before was so far from ideal or idealistic; Eric’s pontifications may have acted as a balm and a reminder of her secret self in her previous decade. Eric also experiences a loss in his family and in her own way, Anna helps him through that time as well.
This is a quietly dramatic book, cinematic at times, and there is an undercurrent running throughout whose name is Tragedy. We know from the first paragraph that Anna commits suicide in a most horrific and painful way. But who is Anna? How did her life come to this place of final commitment to ending her life on this sphere of existence? For better or worse, through tragedy and triumph, this is her story.
August 21, 2018
Eric drops out of college, soon before graduating, and finds a job at a newspaper in a small town. There he meets Anna, a single mother raising two children, who also works at the newspaper. Eric soon gets promoted to editor and begins to spend more time with Anna as they work to make the newspaper perfect. Anna is there at a point in Eric's life where he's still figuring things out, and seems to be amused by his youth and beliefs. The book is a recollection of his friendship with Anna, as Eric looks back on the time he spent working with her.
I personally didn't really like this book, it was /okay/ but that's about the best thing I can say. I didn't really feel emotionally connected to any of the characters, especially not Eric. I also felt he was ascribing way too much significance to his friendship with Anna because it really didn't feel like much even in the light of how secluded she was. It just felt so strange that Eric was considered to be so close to her when he seems to be so self involved through out the book. . That's just how things came off to me and so it made me irritated for most of the book. It wasn't a bad book but it just wasn't for me and I couldn't get into it.
I personally didn't really like this book, it was /okay/ but that's about the best thing I can say. I didn't really feel emotionally connected to any of the characters, especially not Eric. I also felt he was ascribing way too much significance to his friendship with Anna because it really didn't feel like much even in the light of how secluded she was. It just felt so strange that Eric was considered to be so close to her when he seems to be so self involved through out the book. . That's just how things came off to me and so it made me irritated for most of the book. It wasn't a bad book but it just wasn't for me and I couldn't get into it.
February 10, 2017
The Winter in Anna is a beautifully written sad story. At age 20, Erik becomes the editor of a small town weekly newspaper. The book is narrated by Erik and focuses on his year in Shannon, North Dakota. Anna is a few years older, one of the writers, and has a terribly sad back story that Erik uncovers as they work together. Those are the bare bones of the story but they don't really do justice to what makes this short powerful novel work so well. Erik recounts the story of his time in Shannon many years later, after learning about Anna's death. He tells the story with the benefit of time, acknowledging how young he was at the time and how little he understood, still trying to piece together who Anna was and how she touched his life. The Winter of Anna is an experience rather than a story. It's worth reading in a sitting or two if you can afford the time. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
July 6, 2017
Eric is a 20-year old man starting to experience life far away from his family in a North Dakota town at a small newspaper, with a full-time staff of three. One of them is Anna.
"The Winter In Anna" is the story of a young woman's suicide told by her friend, Eric, with such thoughtful and tender hindsight, upon learning of her death many years later, after marrying and having a daughter of his own.
"Oh, Anna, I thought, you almost made it to another spring. And in the simple act of clearly forming her name--Anna, that unadorned, oddly balanced teeter-totter of a name--sorrow came crashing down, and it wasn't distant or abstract at all. I could see her so clearly it took my breath away. No one had been more alive to my younger self. No one had held the bright possibility of existing fully in each day more than she had. No one had seemed to defy the idea that our future is written in our past more than Anna. Our time together filled my mind, and what I remembered was not a surrendered life."
This was the beginning of a heartbreaking but exquisitely written story by Reed Karim. To me, this book is to be experienced.
"The Winter In Anna" is the story of a young woman's suicide told by her friend, Eric, with such thoughtful and tender hindsight, upon learning of her death many years later, after marrying and having a daughter of his own.
"Oh, Anna, I thought, you almost made it to another spring. And in the simple act of clearly forming her name--Anna, that unadorned, oddly balanced teeter-totter of a name--sorrow came crashing down, and it wasn't distant or abstract at all. I could see her so clearly it took my breath away. No one had been more alive to my younger self. No one had held the bright possibility of existing fully in each day more than she had. No one had seemed to defy the idea that our future is written in our past more than Anna. Our time together filled my mind, and what I remembered was not a surrendered life."
This was the beginning of a heartbreaking but exquisitely written story by Reed Karim. To me, this book is to be experienced.
June 28, 2017
3.5 stars I enjoyed this quiet and beautifully detailed story, however, there was something lacking for me.
I really liked the main character, Eric, who narrates this story of his relationship with Anna. Anna, the mother of two children, holds a deep sadness and secretive past that Eric wants to unravel. The writing was deeply touching at times – I truly enjoyed this author’s way with words.
As much as I enjoyed the writing, I felt like the actual storyline itself left me wanting more. While reading, I continually felt as if I was waiting for ‘something’ to happen. I felt anticipation as I turned each page and chapter, yet that feeling was never quite satisfied. The story all comes together in the end, yet I felt there simply wasn’t enough within the storyline to fulfill my hopes and expectations.
This was a slow paced, beautifully atmospheric and haunting tale. It is a novel that you want to take your time with and completely focus on to truly immerse yourself in the story. The melancholy undertone throughout the story left me feeling sadness upon finishing, yet I am happy I experienced the beautiful writing. I would recommend the book as long as the reader is prepared for a slow-paced, quiet and tragic story.
I really liked the main character, Eric, who narrates this story of his relationship with Anna. Anna, the mother of two children, holds a deep sadness and secretive past that Eric wants to unravel. The writing was deeply touching at times – I truly enjoyed this author’s way with words.
As much as I enjoyed the writing, I felt like the actual storyline itself left me wanting more. While reading, I continually felt as if I was waiting for ‘something’ to happen. I felt anticipation as I turned each page and chapter, yet that feeling was never quite satisfied. The story all comes together in the end, yet I felt there simply wasn’t enough within the storyline to fulfill my hopes and expectations.
This was a slow paced, beautifully atmospheric and haunting tale. It is a novel that you want to take your time with and completely focus on to truly immerse yourself in the story. The melancholy undertone throughout the story left me feeling sadness upon finishing, yet I am happy I experienced the beautiful writing. I would recommend the book as long as the reader is prepared for a slow-paced, quiet and tragic story.
November 28, 2016
5★
He is twenty and she is a young but older mother of two children. Paraphrasing from the author’s prose
To him she existed fully every day.
She defied the idea that one’s future is written in the past and did not live a surrendered life.
He was not able to see the things that mattered to her until it was too late.
Living on the frayed edge of a small town in North Dakota, a snowstorm can shut her down; she is well acquainted with grief and deep sorrows.
In the first paragraph we learn that Anna’s life will end badly, shockingly so, by her own hand. The pages will unlock puzzle-like compartments which offer up clues as to why for some the will to die becomes stronger than the one to live. A potential reader might ask why take on such an obviously sad tale. For myself a line out of the movie Shadowlands offers up a response. Based on writer C.S. Lewis’ memoir A Grief Observed, his character is wrestling with the pain of having loved and lost his wife.
"Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.”
Anna’s life was a tragedy yet so much more. My reaction was similar to when I read Sophie's Choice. It hurt deeply but I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the emotional ☯ journey it took me on. Literature grants us the rewards of exploring those twin forces.
There is a meme that continually makes the social media feeds.
"Be kind for every one is fighting a battle you know nothing about."
This story builds on that theme and offers up one such life. It was hauntingly beautiful and continues to resonate with me.
Thank you to NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company publishers for this ARC.
He is twenty and she is a young but older mother of two children. Paraphrasing from the author’s prose
To him she existed fully every day.
She defied the idea that one’s future is written in the past and did not live a surrendered life.
He was not able to see the things that mattered to her until it was too late.
Living on the frayed edge of a small town in North Dakota, a snowstorm can shut her down; she is well acquainted with grief and deep sorrows.
In the first paragraph we learn that Anna’s life will end badly, shockingly so, by her own hand. The pages will unlock puzzle-like compartments which offer up clues as to why for some the will to die becomes stronger than the one to live. A potential reader might ask why take on such an obviously sad tale. For myself a line out of the movie Shadowlands offers up a response. Based on writer C.S. Lewis’ memoir A Grief Observed, his character is wrestling with the pain of having loved and lost his wife.
"Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.”
Anna’s life was a tragedy yet so much more. My reaction was similar to when I read Sophie's Choice. It hurt deeply but I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the emotional ☯ journey it took me on. Literature grants us the rewards of exploring those twin forces.
There is a meme that continually makes the social media feeds.
"Be kind for every one is fighting a battle you know nothing about."
This story builds on that theme and offers up one such life. It was hauntingly beautiful and continues to resonate with me.
Thank you to NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company publishers for this ARC.
October 4, 2020
Reading Road Trip 2020
Current location: North Dakota
Forget the winter in Anna, folks, and let's talk instead about the winter in me, after reading this novel.
And, no, by “winter” I don't mean a sadness from this “sad story.” I mean a depression I've been developing lately from too many of our contemporary American novels, like this one.
In order for me to experience sadness while reading, I must tell you that I share Robert Frost's philosophy: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
I know I can't prove this, but I will tell you that I find it very hard to believe that this author shed any tears while he was writing this melodramatic story.
We must be careful with melodrama. . . because its function is to manipulate us as readers. It's the equivalent of cheap thrills, and, frankly, we've been ripped off when we are being manipulated instead of being exposed to real emotions. The equivalent with food is when you've eaten some giant “death by chocolate” mess that fills your whole plate and you realize, after you've engorged yourself, that two spoonfuls of a decadent mousse would have been a far more satisfying experience.
I can always tell when a writer has written with their bones. Broken off the fingers in their hands, and used the bones for their very own blood-squirting fountain pen.
And this ain't that.
Also, where was the editor? It's bad enough that there's zero character development and zero plot, but why was the author able to go on and on, ruining every scene with overwriting? As far as I'm concerned, most writers are guilty of overwriting at times, but why didn't someone at a major publishing house shout STOP?
Every once in a while, Mr. Karaim would start to describe the sparse North Dakota landscape, and I'd become hopeful, thinking. . . maybe he'll finally choose to make his prose sparse enough to match his setting. It didn't happen.
The perfect example, for me, of what went wrong here, time after time, is on pages 158-159 of my hardcover copy. The unformed protagonist has turned a corner in his car and come upon a buffalo in the road at a national park (something that literally just happened to me this past July in South Dakota), and the writer seems to capture the silence and beauty of the moment. But, then, right after he does the trick, it's like he just can't stop:
He was huge and he wasn't any kind of symbol; he wasn't a metaphor; he didn't stand for anything; he didn't feel sent by God or the obscure workings of the universe to deliver any sort of message. He was just a very large animal unimpressed by me, my car, and quite possibly all of history since the saber-toothed tigers had stop bothering his kind. Here he was, nothing else. He didn't care. He didn't not care. He offered no explanation. He just was. I looked at him, breathed in his all-encompassing, ancient smell of earth and dung and hair. He made me smile and then he made me laugh. I backed up carefully, leaned against the car, and waited until he ambled down into the narrow ditch and a cleft between two buttes.
Wha??? Make it stop.
I can't declare I want my money back; my copy is from the library. But I do want the last few hours of my life back.
Current location: North Dakota
Forget the winter in Anna, folks, and let's talk instead about the winter in me, after reading this novel.
And, no, by “winter” I don't mean a sadness from this “sad story.” I mean a depression I've been developing lately from too many of our contemporary American novels, like this one.
In order for me to experience sadness while reading, I must tell you that I share Robert Frost's philosophy: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
I know I can't prove this, but I will tell you that I find it very hard to believe that this author shed any tears while he was writing this melodramatic story.
We must be careful with melodrama. . . because its function is to manipulate us as readers. It's the equivalent of cheap thrills, and, frankly, we've been ripped off when we are being manipulated instead of being exposed to real emotions. The equivalent with food is when you've eaten some giant “death by chocolate” mess that fills your whole plate and you realize, after you've engorged yourself, that two spoonfuls of a decadent mousse would have been a far more satisfying experience.
I can always tell when a writer has written with their bones. Broken off the fingers in their hands, and used the bones for their very own blood-squirting fountain pen.
And this ain't that.
Also, where was the editor? It's bad enough that there's zero character development and zero plot, but why was the author able to go on and on, ruining every scene with overwriting? As far as I'm concerned, most writers are guilty of overwriting at times, but why didn't someone at a major publishing house shout STOP?
Every once in a while, Mr. Karaim would start to describe the sparse North Dakota landscape, and I'd become hopeful, thinking. . . maybe he'll finally choose to make his prose sparse enough to match his setting. It didn't happen.
The perfect example, for me, of what went wrong here, time after time, is on pages 158-159 of my hardcover copy. The unformed protagonist has turned a corner in his car and come upon a buffalo in the road at a national park (something that literally just happened to me this past July in South Dakota), and the writer seems to capture the silence and beauty of the moment. But, then, right after he does the trick, it's like he just can't stop:
He was huge and he wasn't any kind of symbol; he wasn't a metaphor; he didn't stand for anything; he didn't feel sent by God or the obscure workings of the universe to deliver any sort of message. He was just a very large animal unimpressed by me, my car, and quite possibly all of history since the saber-toothed tigers had stop bothering his kind. Here he was, nothing else. He didn't care. He didn't not care. He offered no explanation. He just was. I looked at him, breathed in his all-encompassing, ancient smell of earth and dung and hair. He made me smile and then he made me laugh. I backed up carefully, leaned against the car, and waited until he ambled down into the narrow ditch and a cleft between two buttes.
Wha??? Make it stop.
I can't declare I want my money back; my copy is from the library. But I do want the last few hours of my life back.
April 26, 2017
Helplessness is the essence of unconditional love; you know you would do anything, surrender anything, betray anything.
This was beautifully written. Its gift is the slow, gentle unspooling of a story that will break your heart. The author did the nearly impossible by deftly revealing a broken woman, both with what he showed us and with what he withheld. This story and its characters felt so real, it was almost a challenge to believe this story to be fictional. With a nostalgic look at an old time newspaper and a North Dakota that itself is a main character in the story, we relive the past as well as Eric's memory will allow and we learn the tremendous strength it takes to live after tragedy.
This one had me sobbing at 1:30 AM. That caught me somewhat by surprise. A story so effectively told that in the end, I was left contemplative and truly devastated for both characters, for different reasons. 4.5 stars
This was beautifully written. Its gift is the slow, gentle unspooling of a story that will break your heart. The author did the nearly impossible by deftly revealing a broken woman, both with what he showed us and with what he withheld. This story and its characters felt so real, it was almost a challenge to believe this story to be fictional. With a nostalgic look at an old time newspaper and a North Dakota that itself is a main character in the story, we relive the past as well as Eric's memory will allow and we learn the tremendous strength it takes to live after tragedy.
This one had me sobbing at 1:30 AM. That caught me somewhat by surprise. A story so effectively told that in the end, I was left contemplative and truly devastated for both characters, for different reasons. 4.5 stars
February 18, 2018
”The birds, they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in”
-- Anthem, songwriter - Leonard Cohen
”I don’t know, I’d said, but I was picturing the door half open, the parchment light of the winter moon framed like a formal invitation, maybe even snow falling in a familiar, seductive whisper, and I did know. “
”Oh, Anna, I thought, you almost made it to another spring.
“And in the simple act of clearly forming her name – Anna, that unadorned, oddly balanced teeter-totter of a name – sorrow came crashing down, and it wasn’t distant or abstract at all. I could see her so clearly it took my breath away. No one had been more alive to my younger self. No one had held the bright possibility of existing fully in each day more than she had. No one had seemed to defy the idea that our future is written in our past more than Anna. Our time together filled my mind, and what I remembered was not a surrendered life.
“But the open door was still there, and with it the possibility I had been wrong about everything. Years later and I still don’t know. So I’ve decided to write this. I will tell you Anna’s story, and you tell me if I have written a tragedy.”
From the first words to the last, I felt as though I was there beside them, a silent witness to this story. Shared through spare, lovely prose, this is both a heartbreaking story and a testament to love. How love shapes us, bends and sometimes breaks us, and ultimately can heal us, as well.
These words now feel as though they’ve engraved themselves on my heart, a recognition of other stories heard, other stories told, such a beautiful variation on such a universal theme.
I loved how this story was balanced by stepping away now and then from the cloud looming overhead in this poetic nod to a kinder, gentler, perhaps more simplistic way of life. Before so much of what so many among us take for granted these days: Cell phones, the internet and all it has spawned, the world has catered to this era of instant gratification, with all of the ups and downs included.
I loved being able to visualize this so completely, but more importantly, for me, was that I felt it all so completely. Every restrained gesture’s emotion, every thought felt so true to the characters.
”I'm so afraid to love you
But more afraid to lose
Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose
Once there was a darkness
Deep and endless night
You gave me everything you had, oh you gave me life
“I will remember you, will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories”
-- I Will Remember You , Sarah McLachlan, Songwriters: Sarah Ann Mclachlan / Seamus Michael Egan / L Merenda David
I’d like to believe that we all have a special someone who profoundly altered us, altered the way we viewed the world, or ourselves, or both. In this story, Anna is older than Eric, at least chronologically, but she has been broken, and sometimes we heal imperfectly. Scars are left, and we try not to let them define us, but they do tell part of our stories. In Anna’s case, the scars fade, but she can’t leave them in the past permanently, held captive by the stories behind the scars. And while their story, the story of their love is not a love story in the more traditional sense; it is, indeed, a love story.
Recommended
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in”
-- Anthem, songwriter - Leonard Cohen
”I don’t know, I’d said, but I was picturing the door half open, the parchment light of the winter moon framed like a formal invitation, maybe even snow falling in a familiar, seductive whisper, and I did know. “
”Oh, Anna, I thought, you almost made it to another spring.
“And in the simple act of clearly forming her name – Anna, that unadorned, oddly balanced teeter-totter of a name – sorrow came crashing down, and it wasn’t distant or abstract at all. I could see her so clearly it took my breath away. No one had been more alive to my younger self. No one had held the bright possibility of existing fully in each day more than she had. No one had seemed to defy the idea that our future is written in our past more than Anna. Our time together filled my mind, and what I remembered was not a surrendered life.
“But the open door was still there, and with it the possibility I had been wrong about everything. Years later and I still don’t know. So I’ve decided to write this. I will tell you Anna’s story, and you tell me if I have written a tragedy.”
From the first words to the last, I felt as though I was there beside them, a silent witness to this story. Shared through spare, lovely prose, this is both a heartbreaking story and a testament to love. How love shapes us, bends and sometimes breaks us, and ultimately can heal us, as well.
These words now feel as though they’ve engraved themselves on my heart, a recognition of other stories heard, other stories told, such a beautiful variation on such a universal theme.
I loved how this story was balanced by stepping away now and then from the cloud looming overhead in this poetic nod to a kinder, gentler, perhaps more simplistic way of life. Before so much of what so many among us take for granted these days: Cell phones, the internet and all it has spawned, the world has catered to this era of instant gratification, with all of the ups and downs included.
I loved being able to visualize this so completely, but more importantly, for me, was that I felt it all so completely. Every restrained gesture’s emotion, every thought felt so true to the characters.
”I'm so afraid to love you
But more afraid to lose
Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose
Once there was a darkness
Deep and endless night
You gave me everything you had, oh you gave me life
“I will remember you, will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories”
-- I Will Remember You , Sarah McLachlan, Songwriters: Sarah Ann Mclachlan / Seamus Michael Egan / L Merenda David
I’d like to believe that we all have a special someone who profoundly altered us, altered the way we viewed the world, or ourselves, or both. In this story, Anna is older than Eric, at least chronologically, but she has been broken, and sometimes we heal imperfectly. Scars are left, and we try not to let them define us, but they do tell part of our stories. In Anna’s case, the scars fade, but she can’t leave them in the past permanently, held captive by the stories behind the scars. And while their story, the story of their love is not a love story in the more traditional sense; it is, indeed, a love story.
Recommended
April 9, 2017
We would like to think we will recognize the people who come to matter to us at first sight, but of course that’s absurd. They often slip into the corners of our lives, unnoticed, then taken for granted, until one day, if we are lucky, we see them anew with startled comprehension, and think, There is my best friend, or There is the woman I love, or There is someone who saved me.
This is one of the most beautiful and contemplative books I have read in recent memory and it absolutely gutted me. I brought home several books from the library fully intending to read the latest thrill ride, but decided to read the first paragraph of this book instead and two pages in I was consumed. I can’t find the words to sufficiently pay homage to this narrative of sheer beauty, so I will let the author’s words wash over you in the hopes that you will pick up this paean to friendship, loss and the secrets that hold us captive.
I remember being aware those long summer nights we worked together how beautiful she was, how she was part of the beauty of this place at this time. But all my emotions seemed to arrive from a distance, barely an echo of real feeling, and I felt her beauty not as a focus of desire, but as a balm, an object of healing contemplation, a quiet grace.
This is another of those books where I could have highlighted something on almost every page, there is grace in almost every passage and the author delivers messages that quietly and subtly reveal truths.
I knew she had done the right thing sending me on my way. I would not have changed the course of my life. And I understood my own hesitation, my own refusal to see some things until too late. We draw lines to protect the people most important to us.
And as much as this is about memory and grief, it is also about small towns, the familiarity of that existence and it captures a moment in time before computers, before social media, when newspapers still mattered and connected a community.
The idea that the past promises us a certain future is always an illusion, of course, but to see the substance of our world slipping out of existence would have been unimaginable to Anna and me then, and so it strikes me this story is, in some lesser part, also a record of a time when words were physical things, immutable once they were stamped into paper, and a small newspaper could believe it mattered, was providing a record for the community it served--flawed, inadequate, but as permanent in its own way as parchment inked by monks bent over their copy boards a thousand years earlier.
As I said at the start of this pseudo-review, this book touched me so deeply, the beauty of the prose, a man’s elegiac revisiting of a turning point in his life and at its center, Anna, so tortured, a woman ‘who carried her damage like a faint shadow across even the brightest day,’ yet found something to treasure in every day. I highly recommend this gorgeous book knowing that I am subjecting you to a painful journey, but one that I am grateful to have taken and suggest you do as well. I wish I could have awarded more than five gushing stars.
This is one of the most beautiful and contemplative books I have read in recent memory and it absolutely gutted me. I brought home several books from the library fully intending to read the latest thrill ride, but decided to read the first paragraph of this book instead and two pages in I was consumed. I can’t find the words to sufficiently pay homage to this narrative of sheer beauty, so I will let the author’s words wash over you in the hopes that you will pick up this paean to friendship, loss and the secrets that hold us captive.
I remember being aware those long summer nights we worked together how beautiful she was, how she was part of the beauty of this place at this time. But all my emotions seemed to arrive from a distance, barely an echo of real feeling, and I felt her beauty not as a focus of desire, but as a balm, an object of healing contemplation, a quiet grace.
This is another of those books where I could have highlighted something on almost every page, there is grace in almost every passage and the author delivers messages that quietly and subtly reveal truths.
I knew she had done the right thing sending me on my way. I would not have changed the course of my life. And I understood my own hesitation, my own refusal to see some things until too late. We draw lines to protect the people most important to us.
And as much as this is about memory and grief, it is also about small towns, the familiarity of that existence and it captures a moment in time before computers, before social media, when newspapers still mattered and connected a community.
The idea that the past promises us a certain future is always an illusion, of course, but to see the substance of our world slipping out of existence would have been unimaginable to Anna and me then, and so it strikes me this story is, in some lesser part, also a record of a time when words were physical things, immutable once they were stamped into paper, and a small newspaper could believe it mattered, was providing a record for the community it served--flawed, inadequate, but as permanent in its own way as parchment inked by monks bent over their copy boards a thousand years earlier.
As I said at the start of this pseudo-review, this book touched me so deeply, the beauty of the prose, a man’s elegiac revisiting of a turning point in his life and at its center, Anna, so tortured, a woman ‘who carried her damage like a faint shadow across even the brightest day,’ yet found something to treasure in every day. I highly recommend this gorgeous book knowing that I am subjecting you to a painful journey, but one that I am grateful to have taken and suggest you do as well. I wish I could have awarded more than five gushing stars.
July 8, 2017
3.5....."I turn these questions over and over to find a different answer every time".
ME TOO!
ME TOO!
February 23, 2017
5+++ stars. I loved this author. It's exactly the kind of book that I enjoy reading. Definitely one of my all-time favorites.
September 21, 2017
This is the story of a friendship between a 20 year old man who has no idea what to do with his life and a 30 year old single mother of two. They both work at a weekly newspaper in a small town in North Dakota. The blurb explains that "it takes place in the last days before the Internet", and the nostalgia that made me experience was almost visceral. No computers or cell phones, just real people connecting with each other face to face.
True friendships can exist between men and women without a sexual component, and thank you Mr. Karaim for giving us that. Anna shares secrets from her past with Eric, he let's his naivete show with her. Hers contained considerable pain and sorrow, his was mostly embarrassment, but they opened up to each other and found a closeness needed by both of them.
The first page of this novel opens with news many years later of Anna's suicide. The pages that follow try to explain why. It ends at the wedding of her now adult son, and her daughter asks Eric why he thinks she did it.
"I think she had decided a long time ago. I think the only question was when it would be okay--when she could leave and hurt people as little as possible. You and your brother, really. When she thought you could manage without her.
As I said this I saw the truth of it. I saw how Anna had chosen each day to go on, and not just to go on, but to live, with all that asks of us, and it seemed to me the bravest thing I had ever seen."
This was a beautiful book, but almost unbearably sad.
True friendships can exist between men and women without a sexual component, and thank you Mr. Karaim for giving us that. Anna shares secrets from her past with Eric, he let's his naivete show with her. Hers contained considerable pain and sorrow, his was mostly embarrassment, but they opened up to each other and found a closeness needed by both of them.
The first page of this novel opens with news many years later of Anna's suicide. The pages that follow try to explain why. It ends at the wedding of her now adult son, and her daughter asks Eric why he thinks she did it.
"I think she had decided a long time ago. I think the only question was when it would be okay--when she could leave and hurt people as little as possible. You and your brother, really. When she thought you could manage without her.
As I said this I saw the truth of it. I saw how Anna had chosen each day to go on, and not just to go on, but to live, with all that asks of us, and it seemed to me the bravest thing I had ever seen."
This was a beautiful book, but almost unbearably sad.
January 22, 2018
4.5 I didn't know this was going to be so emotional! What a heartbreaking story. I will be thinking about this book and these characters for a long time.
April 3, 2017
To begin, I must say that this is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read so far this year, one that has left an imprint I’m sure to feel for some time. I think this is due to the confluence of a couple things. The first is the visually evocative style with which Reed Karaim writes, of which I think I’d never grow weary. The second is that it struck a powerful personal chord in me.
I once loved someone who ended his own life in a terribly painful way. He was a beautiful and artistic person, and could make you feel like you were one-in-a-million when you were with him, but he had a difficult time being here. I’ve always hoped that he finally found the peace in death that he couldn’t find in life and I never think of him as a person who was waiting to die. So when I read this passage from the first page of The Winter in Anna, after it’s stated that Anna has taken her own life, it was like reading something written long ago on my own heart.
I could see her so clearly it took my breath away. No one had been more alive to my younger self. No one had held the bright possibility of existing fully in each day more than she had. No one had seemed to defy the idea that our future is written in our past more than Anna. Our time together filled my mind, and what I remembered was not a surrendered life.
So begins the story of Eric and Anna, told to us by Eric through the lens of the intervening years… a story of friendship, love, and trust. Despite what he now knows, Eric chooses to believe that Anna’s life was not a tragedy or a “surrendered life,” and in telling us about his time with her and revealing her secrets, he tasks us with deciding that for ourselves. As I read, my mind kept returning to those words above and thinking about my own lost friend.
This book is brimming with sharply poignant insight, occasional humor, and an obvious compassion for the subject. The biggest moments are crafted with the kind of clarity and meaning that you can only find when looking back at them through the years. If you read this, I hope you can to see through the heartbreak and pain, to the quiet strength that Anna lent to the lives of her children, to Eric, and to all those around her.
I once loved someone who ended his own life in a terribly painful way. He was a beautiful and artistic person, and could make you feel like you were one-in-a-million when you were with him, but he had a difficult time being here. I’ve always hoped that he finally found the peace in death that he couldn’t find in life and I never think of him as a person who was waiting to die. So when I read this passage from the first page of The Winter in Anna, after it’s stated that Anna has taken her own life, it was like reading something written long ago on my own heart.
I could see her so clearly it took my breath away. No one had been more alive to my younger self. No one had held the bright possibility of existing fully in each day more than she had. No one had seemed to defy the idea that our future is written in our past more than Anna. Our time together filled my mind, and what I remembered was not a surrendered life.
So begins the story of Eric and Anna, told to us by Eric through the lens of the intervening years… a story of friendship, love, and trust. Despite what he now knows, Eric chooses to believe that Anna’s life was not a tragedy or a “surrendered life,” and in telling us about his time with her and revealing her secrets, he tasks us with deciding that for ourselves. As I read, my mind kept returning to those words above and thinking about my own lost friend.
This book is brimming with sharply poignant insight, occasional humor, and an obvious compassion for the subject. The biggest moments are crafted with the kind of clarity and meaning that you can only find when looking back at them through the years. If you read this, I hope you can to see through the heartbreak and pain, to the quiet strength that Anna lent to the lives of her children, to Eric, and to all those around her.
February 22, 2017
“We would like to think we will recognize the people who come to matter to us at first sight, but of course that’s absurd. They often slip into the corners of our lives, unnoticed, then taken for granted, until one day, if we are lucky, we see them anew with startled comprehension, and think, There is my best friend, or There is the woman I love, or There is someone who saved me.”
This book took my breath away. I loved everything about it including the small town setting and a more secretive time before the internet. It starts with a powerful introduction with news of a horrific incident that sets a tone of despair and intrigue throughout. But the most striking thing to me about this book is how the author manages to address a tragic and depressing topic with a grace and elegance that makes it tolerable for the most sensitive reader. The narrator, Eric, reverts to his memory from the past as he tells the story of his long ago friend, Anna. As her mysterious past is revealed he discovers some things about himself, and the impact she made on his life. I love a quietly told story that maintains a subtle tension as it slowly unravels and this one delivers. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
This book took my breath away. I loved everything about it including the small town setting and a more secretive time before the internet. It starts with a powerful introduction with news of a horrific incident that sets a tone of despair and intrigue throughout. But the most striking thing to me about this book is how the author manages to address a tragic and depressing topic with a grace and elegance that makes it tolerable for the most sensitive reader. The narrator, Eric, reverts to his memory from the past as he tells the story of his long ago friend, Anna. As her mysterious past is revealed he discovers some things about himself, and the impact she made on his life. I love a quietly told story that maintains a subtle tension as it slowly unravels and this one delivers. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
January 6, 2017
Two young adults Eric and Anna meet while working together at a small town newspaper, become fast friends, and maybe never before have two people known so much yet so little about each other. Eric didn't stay long but spent his life thinking about the meaning of Anna, the "winter in Anna" where she finds snowstorms unbearable (one of her many mysteries), and the meaning of their relationship; the reasons for the different things Anna did and how to explain her to those still puzzled after her tragic death.
This is a quiet, contemplative story. It is difficult to find words equal to its beauty. If you want adventure and thrills, do not tread here amidst these pages of sadness and Badlands. If you want a meaningful, impactful read, proceed slowly and prepare for a real treat. You might not be able to put it down. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.
This is a quiet, contemplative story. It is difficult to find words equal to its beauty. If you want adventure and thrills, do not tread here amidst these pages of sadness and Badlands. If you want a meaningful, impactful read, proceed slowly and prepare for a real treat. You might not be able to put it down. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.
April 21, 2018
The beginning is a picture of the end, and the first two pages remained with me until I read the closing ones. Their words were that powerful. But when I reached the end, I realized that the beginning picture I saw in my mind was like looking at a snapshot, because a snapshot is really just two-dimensional. You see only the single moment, the rest is often left to be filled by our imagination. The whole picture - the story of Anna, her friendship with Eric, and of her end - was found in small pieces between the first and last page. I hadn't expected to be saying it quite like that because after the first snapshot, I had trouble finding Anna here, at least beyond the superficial, until late in the book. The pieces added together then made the whole. I think that was deliberate by the author, and true to Anna's nature. She is one who has put up walls, not to hurt other people, but to keep the pain inside. Through Eric's words, I found her to be an amalgam – a quite beautiful one – and now I can't forget her. She is a combination of vulnerability and strength, pride and tenderness, all within this fragile shell living each day not for herself, but for the two who need her. I was going to say more, but I think I'll end it with a few words from Eric's memory:
”You reach deep into the grass and toss a handful into the air and it hangs there, blown apart, a tangled alphabet, a story, a life, sure to tumble as all things must, but not now, not yet. It floats above your open palm in the blue sky, like our young hearts, aloft.”
June 23, 2017
This is a haunting story about Anna, a young woman with two children and a tragic past. The narrator, seasoned journalist Eric Valery, looks back to when he was a twenty-year-old who dropped out of college and found a job with a small town weekly newspaper in central North Dakota. He and Anna bonded as they worked on the layout of the newspaper in the pre-digital age. She slowly reveals her secrets about her childhood in the stark Dakota Badlands, marrying too young to the wrong man, the strange scars on her arms, and the deep sadness she feels in winter. Eric is learning about relationships, grief, and what he needs to do with his life.
The author is a native of North Dakota, and there is a strong sense of place in this story. The reporters covering local news--football games, a blizzard, a flood, and town social events--give the reader a feel for an early 1980s Midwestern small town. Anna's story is written beautifully and with quiet sensitivity. The book is as lovely as its gorgeous cover.
The author is a native of North Dakota, and there is a strong sense of place in this story. The reporters covering local news--football games, a blizzard, a flood, and town social events--give the reader a feel for an early 1980s Midwestern small town. Anna's story is written beautifully and with quiet sensitivity. The book is as lovely as its gorgeous cover.
September 16, 2017
4.5 stars
We know from the opening paragraph that things don't end well for Anna. What follows is a quiet contemplative trip down memory lane for Eric, who worked at a small town newspaper with Anna many years ago.
Anna's story is slowly revealed through Eric's musings. There's a tragedy in her past, a devastating one that forever changes her, and helps to explain what drove her to do what she did. Her burden was great and she chose Eric as the one person in the world she shared her story with.
Eric was 20 years old at the time, and Anna 10 years older. With a maturity that comes with time and age, Eric now sees Anna with a new understanding of her life and just what her friendship meant.
The prose is beautiful with sentences and paragraphs that resonated with me. The story is a sad one but so beautiful I'm glad I read it. I finished it a couple of days ago and I still find myself thinking about it. There are so many Annas in the world, with souls that are battered and broken. We don't know their stories but we would do well to be kind and treat people with care.
We know from the opening paragraph that things don't end well for Anna. What follows is a quiet contemplative trip down memory lane for Eric, who worked at a small town newspaper with Anna many years ago.
Anna's story is slowly revealed through Eric's musings. There's a tragedy in her past, a devastating one that forever changes her, and helps to explain what drove her to do what she did. Her burden was great and she chose Eric as the one person in the world she shared her story with.
Eric was 20 years old at the time, and Anna 10 years older. With a maturity that comes with time and age, Eric now sees Anna with a new understanding of her life and just what her friendship meant.
The prose is beautiful with sentences and paragraphs that resonated with me. The story is a sad one but so beautiful I'm glad I read it. I finished it a couple of days ago and I still find myself thinking about it. There are so many Annas in the world, with souls that are battered and broken. We don't know their stories but we would do well to be kind and treat people with care.
June 24, 2017
THE WINTER IN ANNA written by REED KARAIM
This is the best written book I have ever read in my life. I loved it so much because, line for line, from the beautiful first page to the last, the crystalline prose is written in spare, pure, beautiful words that perfectly creates such powerful imagery. Each description paints a masterpiece so exquisite that I felt as if I was witnessing the love and friendship of Eric and Anna-- as if I was there vicariously feeling all of the emotions that impacted the lives of each person. I have never been so completely unravelled by a book, that virtually reached out and left such a powerful imprint on my soul that I will never forget, ever.
This author inspired me and triggered deep seated memories, of both treasured feelings and experiences, that I wish I could do again, because they brought me the highest amounts of total bliss. At the same time, I have learned to live with the excruciating pain, that accompanies the sudden death of a best friend, when my only sister died suddenly and tragically. This story told by Eric was very visual for me, which added to my enjoyment of this highly unique novel, that the talented author's poetic command, to evoke powerful emotional responses, enchanted me by his ability to transport me to a gentler, nostalgic period, in time and place and I deeply felt like I personally loved all of the people involved in this story.
I don't want give away any spoilers or plot summaries, because my hope is that you get to be surprised, at the beginning, because you learn what the story is about on the first page. I promise that the writing is so superb and the story is timeless and will appeal to both men and women. It is highly relatable, with character's, that are all kind people who will appeal to everybody. There is great sadness, as well, as there are situations, that we as people all will at sometime during our
lives, will all be happily reminded of memories of these experiences, or we will think about what it will be like, when we inevitably experience them. I am not saying that you are definitely going to do and make the exact same decisions and live the life of our narrator Eric, such as choice of education, or that you will get the same exact job that he does. I pray that you will not lose or experience his pain and grief, of what this story is about. I don't think you will live his life and experience what the story plot is about. Not likely and unheard of, that the main story is ever going to happen to you. That would be absurd, for me to think, what happens to him is going to happen to you. It is the bigger picture, that is timeless and universal. I am saying that you will make friends along the way. You will probably pick a spouse, get married, have children, experience the normal rites of passage, that, we either still have yet to do, but we all at sometime, will have families of our own, that is what makes this story universal. If we are lucky, we will meet and remember, for the rest of our lives, that special person, who will mean so much to us. We will never forget the person, who we loved and was special and stands out, from everybody else, for the pivotal and impressional time that was our first. I have to disclose that I just remembered there is one unlikable background character. Happy Reading.
This is the best written book I have ever read in my life. I loved it so much because, line for line, from the beautiful first page to the last, the crystalline prose is written in spare, pure, beautiful words that perfectly creates such powerful imagery. Each description paints a masterpiece so exquisite that I felt as if I was witnessing the love and friendship of Eric and Anna-- as if I was there vicariously feeling all of the emotions that impacted the lives of each person. I have never been so completely unravelled by a book, that virtually reached out and left such a powerful imprint on my soul that I will never forget, ever.
This author inspired me and triggered deep seated memories, of both treasured feelings and experiences, that I wish I could do again, because they brought me the highest amounts of total bliss. At the same time, I have learned to live with the excruciating pain, that accompanies the sudden death of a best friend, when my only sister died suddenly and tragically. This story told by Eric was very visual for me, which added to my enjoyment of this highly unique novel, that the talented author's poetic command, to evoke powerful emotional responses, enchanted me by his ability to transport me to a gentler, nostalgic period, in time and place and I deeply felt like I personally loved all of the people involved in this story.
I don't want give away any spoilers or plot summaries, because my hope is that you get to be surprised, at the beginning, because you learn what the story is about on the first page. I promise that the writing is so superb and the story is timeless and will appeal to both men and women. It is highly relatable, with character's, that are all kind people who will appeal to everybody. There is great sadness, as well, as there are situations, that we as people all will at sometime during our
lives, will all be happily reminded of memories of these experiences, or we will think about what it will be like, when we inevitably experience them. I am not saying that you are definitely going to do and make the exact same decisions and live the life of our narrator Eric, such as choice of education, or that you will get the same exact job that he does. I pray that you will not lose or experience his pain and grief, of what this story is about. I don't think you will live his life and experience what the story plot is about. Not likely and unheard of, that the main story is ever going to happen to you. That would be absurd, for me to think, what happens to him is going to happen to you. It is the bigger picture, that is timeless and universal. I am saying that you will make friends along the way. You will probably pick a spouse, get married, have children, experience the normal rites of passage, that, we either still have yet to do, but we all at sometime, will have families of our own, that is what makes this story universal. If we are lucky, we will meet and remember, for the rest of our lives, that special person, who will mean so much to us. We will never forget the person, who we loved and was special and stands out, from everybody else, for the pivotal and impressional time that was our first. I have to disclose that I just remembered there is one unlikable background character. Happy Reading.
July 5, 2017
I read this book on a total lark, had never heard of it before but was intrigued after having seen it with glowing reviews on some GR friends shelves.
Set in small town Shannon, North Dakota, the book opens with our narrator (Eric) telling how Anna's life ends. From there we go back as Eric narrates the story when he first meets Anna after he lands a job at the weekly newspaper, the Shannon Sentinel. The daily life of working at the little press is a diverse and charming one in itself.
What really sets this book apart for me, in addition to the story line itself, is the writing. Exquisite does not do it justice. And the fact that this was, at its core, a book of secrets shared and not shared, friendship, wisdom, loving something enough to set it free, the fleeting moments in time when we are young enough to pursue choices. ("You've done all you were meant to do here. You don't want to get stuck...So you're going to move on").
There were many instances of writing I found so profound, so simple yet speaking volumes, and I wanted to note a few passages here:
P. 200 - 201 "Christmas at home was the first without my father, but it was astonishing how present he was, how he appeared quiet and expectant in every awkward silence, how he took his empty seat at dinner....how he sat in his spot on the couch on Christmas morning and watched us open our presents, waiting to see if we liked what we had been given. For years, our presents from our parents had said From Mom and Dad on the tag, and this year they simply had our names on them...it was as if our family had disappeared as a recognized entity"
"I felt my father, who had been standing at the far end of the room with his arms crossed, back into the hallway and disappear. He had lingered to see us through this last loss. Now we were on our own."
P. 234 "We never spoke, but she was part of so many things in those years: the resolve that allowed me to get up and face every day at the legal publisher's without complaining; the determination that it wouldn't be where I ended up; the wisdom that it was better to be alone than to be with the wrong person...In all this she was present"
P. 18 "She was a woman of bottomless heartiness. Are you having fun? It was her favorite question, one she asked almost every time she saw me. It's supposed to be fun, you know" -- ah, imagine having a boss like Louise! :)
Sadly, I have to return this book to the library --- it's one of those that I should have bought and maybe I will just have to do that. I would HIGHLY recommend this book.
Set in small town Shannon, North Dakota, the book opens with our narrator (Eric) telling how Anna's life ends. From there we go back as Eric narrates the story when he first meets Anna after he lands a job at the weekly newspaper, the Shannon Sentinel. The daily life of working at the little press is a diverse and charming one in itself.
What really sets this book apart for me, in addition to the story line itself, is the writing. Exquisite does not do it justice. And the fact that this was, at its core, a book of secrets shared and not shared, friendship, wisdom, loving something enough to set it free, the fleeting moments in time when we are young enough to pursue choices. ("You've done all you were meant to do here. You don't want to get stuck...So you're going to move on").
There were many instances of writing I found so profound, so simple yet speaking volumes, and I wanted to note a few passages here:
P. 200 - 201 "Christmas at home was the first without my father, but it was astonishing how present he was, how he appeared quiet and expectant in every awkward silence, how he took his empty seat at dinner....how he sat in his spot on the couch on Christmas morning and watched us open our presents, waiting to see if we liked what we had been given. For years, our presents from our parents had said From Mom and Dad on the tag, and this year they simply had our names on them...it was as if our family had disappeared as a recognized entity"
"I felt my father, who had been standing at the far end of the room with his arms crossed, back into the hallway and disappear. He had lingered to see us through this last loss. Now we were on our own."
P. 234 "We never spoke, but she was part of so many things in those years: the resolve that allowed me to get up and face every day at the legal publisher's without complaining; the determination that it wouldn't be where I ended up; the wisdom that it was better to be alone than to be with the wrong person...In all this she was present"
P. 18 "She was a woman of bottomless heartiness. Are you having fun? It was her favorite question, one she asked almost every time she saw me. It's supposed to be fun, you know" -- ah, imagine having a boss like Louise! :)
Sadly, I have to return this book to the library --- it's one of those that I should have bought and maybe I will just have to do that. I would HIGHLY recommend this book.
July 13, 2017
Seriously, fellas. My feed. This little book blanketed my feed last month. I couldn't escape it. Given that the audiobook was available from Hoopla, how your reviews were leaning heavily towards "must read," and how it looked to be a nice change of pace from my past few selections, I decided to keep the blanket going, like the "pay-it-forward" lines you get at drive-throughs and toll booths.
This was something; author Reed Karaim packs an extraordinary gut-punch despite the small-town setting of his novel. On one hand, the story is a beautiful ode to journalism, community newspapers and publishing. As someone who was lucky enough to land her dream job in magazine publishing immediately after graduating college in 2000--only to witness the magazine be acquired, slowly dismantled, and ultimately, transformed into a URL--I got a serious case of nostalgia and sadness from some of Karaim's passages. Far into the book, the narrator Eric writes with almost shell-shocked wonder how none of his small-town paper staff's earlier selves could've ever imagined the coming of the Internet, trying to explain the permanence and importance of what they felt they did each day, which was some of the finest writing I've come across.
On the other hand, there is such a tangible feeling of sadness that permeates this book: even happy instances are seen from a contemplative, reflective distance, where our narrator realizes only later he might've been experiencing happiness at the time. Anna, Eric's coworker and friend, and the woman who shaped him, is quite possibly one of the most tragic literary figures I've come across. I started to wonder what would happen if at some point, A Little Life's Jude showed up at Anna's door. I think the book might've just plum washed away in a river of tears.
I really commend Reed Karaim for choosing to highlight such an atypical "relationship" between Eric and Anna--was it a friendship or love or something else entirely? He managed to convey how something so undefinable can all the same be everything.
The sadness within The Winter in Anna's pages made this an uncomfortable read. "Just be happy, dammit!" I wanted to scream throughout. (Not that I wasn't warned from the very first pages.) Karaim's exquisite prose ultimately made me embrace and appreciate the experience.
This was something; author Reed Karaim packs an extraordinary gut-punch despite the small-town setting of his novel. On one hand, the story is a beautiful ode to journalism, community newspapers and publishing. As someone who was lucky enough to land her dream job in magazine publishing immediately after graduating college in 2000--only to witness the magazine be acquired, slowly dismantled, and ultimately, transformed into a URL--I got a serious case of nostalgia and sadness from some of Karaim's passages. Far into the book, the narrator Eric writes with almost shell-shocked wonder how none of his small-town paper staff's earlier selves could've ever imagined the coming of the Internet, trying to explain the permanence and importance of what they felt they did each day, which was some of the finest writing I've come across.
On the other hand, there is such a tangible feeling of sadness that permeates this book: even happy instances are seen from a contemplative, reflective distance, where our narrator realizes only later he might've been experiencing happiness at the time. Anna, Eric's coworker and friend, and the woman who shaped him, is quite possibly one of the most tragic literary figures I've come across. I started to wonder what would happen if at some point, A Little Life's Jude showed up at Anna's door. I think the book might've just plum washed away in a river of tears.
I really commend Reed Karaim for choosing to highlight such an atypical "relationship" between Eric and Anna--was it a friendship or love or something else entirely? He managed to convey how something so undefinable can all the same be everything.
The sadness within The Winter in Anna's pages made this an uncomfortable read. "Just be happy, dammit!" I wanted to scream throughout. (Not that I wasn't warned from the very first pages.) Karaim's exquisite prose ultimately made me embrace and appreciate the experience.
February 6, 2017
This is a difficult book for me to review.
It's ominous in tone. Heavy as an avalanche of progressively increasing tsunamis.
From the most scalding beginning of despair it attempts to trace a better or "braver" before. And the voice of the young man is gut honest.
Writing of the utmost skill. It's about finding a purpose, oneself, forgiving the unforgivable and plodding on.
But far too sad to enjoy, IMHO.
It's ominous in tone. Heavy as an avalanche of progressively increasing tsunamis.
From the most scalding beginning of despair it attempts to trace a better or "braver" before. And the voice of the young man is gut honest.
Writing of the utmost skill. It's about finding a purpose, oneself, forgiving the unforgivable and plodding on.
But far too sad to enjoy, IMHO.
June 27, 2017
This is many someone's 5 star book, but not mine. Again, I take a minority position. I found it dull, slow, and quite the downer. Man, what a slog. A beautifully written slog. 2 stars.
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