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Title: Winterwood

Author: Patrick McCabe

Narrator: Gerry O'Brien

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-28-08

Publisher: Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

A chilling, spellbinding and highly original new novel from the prize-winning author of Breakfast on Pluto and The Butcher Boy. Once, Redmond Hatch was in heaven, married to the lovely Catherine and father to enchanting daughter Immy. But then he took them both to Winterwood. And it would never be the same again...

In Patrick McCabe's spellbinding new novel, nothing - and no one - are ever quite what they seem. When Hatch, devoted husband and father, revisits the secluded mountains where he grew up, he meets Auld Pappie Ned. While he claims to be just a harmless local fiddler, a teller of tall tales, Ned sets off a cataclysmic chain of events in Redmond's life. From the mysterious disappearance of Redmond's daughter to the reluctant remembrance of a troubled boyhood to secret glimpses into an unstable marriage, everything soon spirals out of control.

Narrated with hypnotic precision and fractured lyricism, Winterwood is a disturbing and unforgettable tale of love, death and identity from a masterful novelist.

Members Reviews:

Terrible

This book had so many "big" words it was hard to understand then when I thought I had the concept down I looked forward to the ending which made no sense... it wasn't what I hoped it would be ...

definitely a waste of my time

The definition of the unreliable narrator plus accomplices

I appreciate the deliberate lack of commercial appeal in this book and although not as dense and hammering as Patrick White's efforts, it's in the ballpark. This writer wants to repel readers and works extra hard to do so. He's mighty successful at putting a reader at multiple arms' lengths, and despite the distance, the vignettes are often effective and uncomfortably intimate.

The weakness is in the point of the thing -- shocking? No, quite stock in that effort. Psychotic? Also no. You kind of know what's going on here and what will transpire within the first fifty pagesâno new ground broken. I wish the writer were smart enough to fulfill the promise of some of the prose, which is artfully spartan and beautifully poetic. The disjointed nature of the narrative is a bit of a marvel, but it succeeds in distracting rather than adding to the experience. Whenever I realize I'm congratulating myself as an attentive reader for sticking with something and taking the effort to understand the maze of an author's efforts, I immediately wish I were just reading Jane Eyre again. The book is a worthwhile experience for a broad reader, but only if you have a few hours to kill.

A Fragmented Mind

Novelist Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy; Breakfast on Pluto) examines the social and political arc of the past twenty-five years in Ireland as a parallel to the shifting fortunes and inexorable decline of his protagonist in Winterwood. The protagonist/narrator's attempts to leap into the competitive modern world exemplify the efforts of his country to do the same. At this and at a more personal level Winterwood is about the difficulty of extricating oneself from the ghosts of the past, and the pernicious nature of deeply imprinted, horrific childhood experiences.

When journalist Redmond Hatch returns to his former home in the rural town of Slievenageeha to write a colorful article about the folk traditions there, he meets a native named Ned Strange and immediately falls under his spell.