Patrick Gale’s wonderful sixteenth novel opens with a disturbing bathroom scene. Incarcerated in a mental asylum, Harry is manhandled by a couple of attendants into a hot bath where he’ll be held immobile for hours, ostensibly to calm him; whether it could, when I was having palpitations merely reading about it, seemed unlikely. A relief then, to move with Harry a few pages later to a more benign institution, a therapeutic community by the river. Yet he remains haunted by a previous trauma:
These memories lay in rooms he couldn’t enter. In the quiet moments of lucidity between baths, he had approached them close enough to sense they were wrapped in a grief so powerful that even to put his hand on the doorknobs would fry his skin. (p11)
Moving back and forth in place and time, between his convalescence in the community and a life that has taken him from upper-middle-class England to the newly colonised Canadian prairies in the early years of the twentieth century, the doors to those troubling memories are gradually opened to us.
These memories lay in rooms he couldn’t enter. In the quiet moments of lucidity between baths, he had approached them close enough to sense they were wrapped in a grief so powerful that even to put his hand on the doorknobs would fry his skin. (p11)
Moving back and forth in place and time, between his convalescence in the community and a life that has taken him from upper-middle-class England to the newly colonised Canadian prairies in the early years of the twentieth century, the doors to those troubling memories are gradually opened to us.
The elder of two orphaned brothers, his horizons limited by his own stammering shyness and an inheritance that deprives him of the need to earn his living, Harry Cane marries almost the first woman he encounters. Despite the fact that Winnie loves another, and some ill-advised investments requiring them to live more modestly, the marriage seems to suit him, especially when their daughter comes along. But an affair with a man who claims he can cure his stammer makes Harry reckless; to avoid a scandal and probably prison, he’s forced to flee the country. Yet even then, with the pain of separation from his wife, child and lover, Harry sees this as an opportunity:
Since boyhood, probably since his mother’s death, he had periodically indulged in fantasies of being liberated by catastrophe. War would descend around him, or revolution, plague, earthquake, tidal wave, something elemental and huge that would shatter all certainty and stability and leave him suddenly, dizzyingly free. (p59)
Like Jack and Mabel in The Snow Child, Henry is challenged by life in the wilderness. Yet unlike Jay in Soil, he learns to make a success of his farm. In his neighbours, siblings Petra and Paul (reminiscent of the unconventional Kitty and her brother in another story of extreme survival, The Surfacing), he finds support – both practical and emotional – friendship and love. It seems, as Freud famously didn’t say, that love and work have been the making of him. Like Rebecca in Still Life with Bread Crumbs, he’s been given a second chance, until societal disapproval, a violent rapist, war and influenza threaten his happiness once again.
A Place Called Winter is a beautifully written and tender novel about one man’s journey to find himself, loosely based on the life of the author’s maternal grandfather. Harry’s anxieties about his sexuality is made more poignant by the reader’s ability to look back from more enlightened times. But this, along with the references to the racism and sexism of the time, is never heavy-handed. When Petra, wanting to better understand her husband’s relationship with her brother, asks if the men’s connection is emotional as well as physical, he tells her:
“I suppose, in a different world … if everyone felt differently, it would be both. When a thing has always been forbidden and must live in darkness and silence, it’s hard to know how it might be, if allowed to thrive.” (p270)
Since boyhood, probably since his mother’s death, he had periodically indulged in fantasies of being liberated by catastrophe. War would descend around him, or revolution, plague, earthquake, tidal wave, something elemental and huge that would shatter all certainty and stability and leave him suddenly, dizzyingly free. (p59)
Like Jack and Mabel in The Snow Child, Henry is challenged by life in the wilderness. Yet unlike Jay in Soil, he learns to make a success of his farm. In his neighbours, siblings Petra and Paul (reminiscent of the unconventional Kitty and her brother in another story of extreme survival, The Surfacing), he finds support – both practical and emotional – friendship and love. It seems, as Freud famously didn’t say, that love and work have been the making of him. Like Rebecca in Still Life with Bread Crumbs, he’s been given a second chance, until societal disapproval, a violent rapist, war and influenza threaten his happiness once again.
A Place Called Winter is a beautifully written and tender novel about one man’s journey to find himself, loosely based on the life of the author’s maternal grandfather. Harry’s anxieties about his sexuality is made more poignant by the reader’s ability to look back from more enlightened times. But this, along with the references to the racism and sexism of the time, is never heavy-handed. When Petra, wanting to better understand her husband’s relationship with her brother, asks if the men’s connection is emotional as well as physical, he tells her:
“I suppose, in a different world … if everyone felt differently, it would be both. When a thing has always been forbidden and must live in darkness and silence, it’s hard to know how it might be, if allowed to thrive.” (p270)
But what of the Native Americans, you might be wondering. In the therapeutic community, Harry befriends a Cree he encounters first in female garb as Ursula, then as the more masculine Little Bear, who helps to heal his soul. I was intending to save this part of the novel for another post on gender-crossing in fiction, but when Charli Mills began rounding up the Rough Writers with another flash fiction prompt, I thought I’d have a bash at condensing Ursula’s story into 99 words. Charlie is corralling in stories about symptoms, a word that, for me, evokes not a means of diagnosing a problem in order to soothe it, but a way of pathologising a person’s struggle to be. It also chimes Yvonne Spence’s follow-up to the compassion blogathon, requesting posts to counteract bullying to mark the UN World Day of Social Justice (although surely that needs more than one day), as I think bullying can sometimes be disguised as help. Anyway, here’s my tentative contribution. I acknowledge that I know very little about First Nation cultures – although I did find some interesting references on the concept of two-spirit identities within Cree culture – so I sincerely hope that my effort doesn’t compound existing harm:
What was wrong with the boy? We’d given him so much. Clean sheets, sturdy boots instead of moccasins, a proper education. When he was sick, we had the doctor dose him with medicine, not those stinking herbal potions and dances round the fire. When he was lonely, we bade him kneel before the Lord.
Yet he wouldn’t succumb. Parading in bonnets and dresses, he mumbled about being two-souls, male and female both. It saddened us to take the lash to him, but we had no choice. We had to beat the Indian out of him. For his own good.
Now, back to the novel: if you’re interested in the history of the European colonisation of North America, if you enjoy un-soppy romance, if you like to read about characters who are required to keep the essence of who they are secret and/or you simply want to read a novel that’s a pleasure from beginning to end, I can highly recommend A Place Called Winter. Thanks to Tinder Press for my proof copy.
What was wrong with the boy? We’d given him so much. Clean sheets, sturdy boots instead of moccasins, a proper education. When he was sick, we had the doctor dose him with medicine, not those stinking herbal potions and dances round the fire. When he was lonely, we bade him kneel before the Lord.
Yet he wouldn’t succumb. Parading in bonnets and dresses, he mumbled about being two-souls, male and female both. It saddened us to take the lash to him, but we had no choice. We had to beat the Indian out of him. For his own good.
Now, back to the novel: if you’re interested in the history of the European colonisation of North America, if you enjoy un-soppy romance, if you like to read about characters who are required to keep the essence of who they are secret and/or you simply want to read a novel that’s a pleasure from beginning to end, I can highly recommend A Place Called Winter. Thanks to Tinder Press for my proof copy.
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