The first book that came to mind for me was Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. This was her last novel and the only one published under her own name. And, I promise, I’d already thought of this book as a “wintery” book before it hit me that the main character’s name is Lucy Snowe!
The reason this book seems “wintery” to me is because of the sense of alienation, repression, and even pessimism that permeates the entire book. The mood is undeniably bleak and cold. Don’t get me wrong. It’s one of my favorite novels of all time; it’s beautifully written, and right now it’s on my “re-read” list. But even Brontë’s best friend said the novel was “almost unbearably painful” to read. (A comment that cost her Brontë’s friendship, by the way.)“Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in the night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. A rattle of the window, a cry of the blast only replied---Sleep never came!”
Jane Eyre is also a wintry book, again probably for the isolation and loneliness of the main character. I remember loving this book in Junior High, thinking it was so romantic (in the teenage way, not the literary one), then re-reading it as a grown woman and feeling so angry at the ending. It was not the same novel at 34 that is was at 14. Then throw Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea into the mix and the picture gets really bleak.
"Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt? May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love."
Finally, I think Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, at least parts of it, could be described as a “wintery” book. I know that seems odd, to call a book set mostly in Africa “wintery,” but the despair, the loneliness, the guilt, and even the physical hunger of these women—mother and daughters—can be felt physically by the reader. If you have not read this book, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a masterpiece.“I felt the breath of God go cold on my skin.”
What books mean Winter to you?
2 comments:
Three Cups of Tea comes to mind becaus of the work Andrew Mortenson does for the Afghans begins as an individual dream to repay a personal debt. He unsuccessfully tried to raise money by typing letters on a borrowed typewriter and mailing then to celebrities. He slept I his car because he couldn't bring himself to spend money on rent when the Afghans were so needy. Another "wintery" characteristic is the harsh climate of the mountains where he built so many schools.
I have always thought of "Little Women" as a wintery book. Probably because it takes place in the winter but also because of all the trials they go through. It is a "heavy" story to me and when I think of a summer read, I think of a "light" story.
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