Love Begins in Winter: Summary and book reviews of Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy, plus links to an excerpt from Love Begins in Winter and a biography of Simon Van Booy.
Love Begins in Winter Five Stories
by Simon Van Booy
Paperback: May 2009,
256 pages.
On the verge of giving up—anchored to dreams that never came true and to people who have long since disappeared from their lives—Van Booy's characters walk the streets of these stark and beautiful stories until chance meetings with strangers force them to face responsibility for lives they thought had continued on without them.
BOOK REVIEWS
BookBrowse
Simon Van Booy's characters in
Love Begins in Winter dive
after love without hesitation, act on mysterious coincidence, and bandage their
tragic wounds with new memories. The stories are on the long side (50-70 pages),
offering the reader time to piece together the fragments of characters and
story. Van Booy writes with a combination of chunky, breath-paused sentences and
poetic fluidity. The rhythm reminds me of someone recounting a dream – each
detail built upon the last, gaining momentum until the revelation erupts:
One day, George Frack received
a letter. It was from very far away. The stamp had a bird on it. Its wings were
wide and still. The bird was soaring high above a forest, its body flecked with
red sparks. George wondered if the bird was flying
to a place or away from it…
Then he opened it and found a page of blue handwriting and a photograph of a
girl with brown hair. The girl was wearing a navy polyester dress dotted with
small red hearts. She also had a pink clip in her hair. Her hands were tiny.
The handwriting was full of
loops, as if each letter were a cup held fast upon the page by the heaviness of
each small intention.
When George read the page, his
mouth fell open and a low groaning resounded from his throat.
Van Booy
is generous with philosophical musings and declarations about love, life,
memory, which, paired with coincidence and fateful encounters, give these
stories an ethereal, other-worldly quality – much like the suspended-in-time
feeling of falling in love.
Publishers Weekly
Though Van Booy's tendency to deliver a late-story surprise becomes predictable, each of these stories has moments of sheer loveliness.
Booklist
More about what is felt than what happens, Van Booy’s stories pay beautiful homage to human connection.
Kirkus Reviews
The author has a pitch-perfect tone for writing about the tender passion. Instead of florid, melodramatic prose, the five tales feature hushed, patient storytelling that's deliberately abstracted; Van Booy's goal is to capture the ineffable nature of falling in love.
Indie Next List Pick
Simon Van Booy's second collection offers intricate stories brimming with supple and mysterious energy. One never knows with Van Booy's distinctive style what will happen next, what will break your heart and heal it at the same time, what symbolic gesture will be rife with coincidence. His writing is pitch-perfect, and he has such great respect for his characters. Van Booy deserves many more fans.
Binnie Kirshenbaum
The stories of Love Begins in Winter are stylistically brilliant and emotionally beautiful. I found myself gasping, literally gasping, at surprises so perfectly attuned as to be inevitable. Simon Van Booy is an extraordinary writer, and this is a book to be read and reread again and again.
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Indie Next List Pick
Binnie Kirshenbaum
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