Winter Willow: A Novel

by Deborah-Anne Tunney

During a winter season in the mid-1970s, unexpected and dramatic events shape the lives of three people living in the mansion, Winter Willow.

Melanie, a young graduate student, is grieving the loss of her mother and main support system when she discovers that her PhD funding has been cancelled. Then she meets Stone, owner of Winter Willow, an old mansion in her neighbourhood, and is offered a position as his personal assistant. Moving in with him during that snowy and isolating season not only creates a strange sleepiness that makes it difficult for Melanie to concentrate on her studies, but also serves to disrupt the life and routine of Stone and his housekeeper, Celeste.

When Melanie begins a relationship with a fellow grad student, she is confronted with the choice between a future with him and her life at Winter Willow. This novel explores the moment when a life can change, the pivot upon which the future depends.

196 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2019

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

In January 1976, a student named Melanie is dawdling her way through a PhD in English at a Canadian university. She has been researching her thesis for so long that her scholarship funding has run out, and since then has been supporting herself as a writing advisor. But her money situation, already tight, becomes more so when, at a departmental meeting, she learns that budget reductions are forcing the immediate elimination of the writing assistance program, cutting off her only source of income. Melanie is in mourning for her mother, dead less than a year, and, since her father was never in the picture, she suddenly finds herself alone in the world pondering an uncertain future. Her mother worked an office job while raising Melanie on her own. They lived modestly in a small apartment. Melanie doesn’t have much and claims that being poor suits her. But her predicament compels her to consider practical needs, and through a fortuitous series of events she encounters an elderly man named Stone Shackelford, a writer, celebrated fifty years earlier for his novel The Uninvited, a “tale of loss and regret” which Melanie recalls having read while in her teens. Stone lives in a huge old mansion called Winter Willow, rattling about the place on his own except for a housekeeper named Celeste. In need of an assistant to sort his papers, answer correspondence and arrange his books, Stone offers Melanie employment, and despite some misgivings she accepts. The remainder of Deborah Anne Tunney’s gripping debut novel chronicles Melanie’s time in residence at Winter Willow during that fateful winter of 1976, in the company of a secretive writer approaching the end of his life who is troubled by and obsessed with the past, and his prickly, overly protective housekeeper. The weather that winter is poor, the city pummelled by storms that follow quickly one upon the other. Melanie is mystified and occasionally alarmed by Stone’s behaviour toward her—by turns generous and possessive—which seems to shift according to volatile and unpredictable mood swings. Oppressed by the weight of the mansion’s long history and the Shackelford family’s tragic past, her work on her thesis slows as she finds it more and more difficult to concentrate. Then she meets another grad student, Martin, and they embark upon a relationship. Eventually Melanie sees that her presence at Winter Willow is disruptive and unhelpful, that just by being there she is threatening a delicate balance that’s been decades in the making, and with Martin waiting in the wings she decides to move out. Melanie is a ruminative narrator and the writing throughout the novel is cinematic in its attention to detail, the mystery at its heart compelling. The story’s eerie and atmospheric setting is exploited to stunning effect. Winter Willow, brief as it is, seems to embrace an encyclopaedic range of human emotion and experience. But its concision is one of its greatest strengths, because at the end we are wishing for it to be longer. And isn’t that precisely the reader response that every author hopes for?

[Anna Lapointe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional book and a great read. I loved the story and the style of writing. This one is a winner!

[Jo-anne Zahab · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the novel “Winter Willow” written by Deborah-Anne Tunney over the holidays. I found the novel very intriguing and I just couldn’t put the book down until I finished it.

Deborah-Anne Tunney has a style of writing that really captivates. Her novel spans several decades and it’s obvious that the author researches her material well because I always felt like I was actually being transported in and out of different eras. What a talent!

I felt I could relate to the protagonist Mèlanie, who could have been any young student struggling to make ends meet while putting herself through university. I especially enjoyed the closeness of the relationship between mother and daughter and then subsequently the parallel between Melanie and her own daughter.

A wonderful read and a page turner for sure!

[Barbara Sibbald]

A Gothic tale set in the 70s! How charmingly Tunney cuts in the references to Grace Pool (p 91) and other familiar scenarios, setting the readers mind off in a totally different direction. There are, three times at play: Gothic, Post-World War I and the 70s. Tunney pulls the hat-trick off with apparent ease. There's an excellent letter and description of the hell of war (p. 87). I also loved the depiction of the protagonist's first meeting with Stone at Winter Willow, and the description of the house itself is so evocative, I found myself wondering where it was and if one could still see it.

At a granular level, some of the temporal transitions left me mystified and re-reading sentences, but perhaps that's more a factor of my jet-lag at the time than the writing.

At heart, this is a mystery, but then aren't all truly compelling plots? A good read.

[Diane Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. I just couldn't put it down. I just ordered her first book "A View From The Lane" which I can't wait to read. Deborah-Anne Tunney what a remarkable book. I still imagine myself walking around Winter Willow. Such a good read, don't pass this one by.

[Hannah Foulger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bleak. Dark. Utterly depressing. Everything I love in a novel. Tunney has crafted a Canadian inheritance to the gothic Brontes. With tightly coiled description of a city that reads like the dreary moors, a grieving heroine and the ready spring of a trap, reading Winter Willow is like tip toeing down a dark hallway in an unknown house. You don’t quite know where it is going, but you’re compelled to follow the trail.

[A. Loucks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is excellent for most of its length and increasingly so towards the latter part where the mood of the story is enriched by its descriptive prose.
Looking forward to her next novel.

[Anna Dowdall · Rating 5 out of 5]

exquisite, haunting, strange

[Jacinda Literature Babe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling and intriguing, I couldn't put this story down. It's darkness lives in the cold hearts of the main characters, each of whom are damaged by choices and events that can't be changed... but forever relived.

Like a broken vase that has been repaired, the cracks barely visible but broken it is.