Holy damn, it's good
- DAVID MITCHELL,
Kevin Barry lights out for the territory and once again comes back with a shining nugget of gold. <i>The Heart in Winter</i> is a glorious and haunted yarn, with all the elements - the doomed lovers, the bounty hunters, the knife-fights and whisky-soaked songs - brought to mysterious life by the heft and polish of the Barry sentence. Marvellous
- JON McGREGOR,
A great big rollicking ballad of a novel. A love story, and a slice of history, in a language as close to song as literature will ever get
- COLUM McCANN,
A haunting, hypnotic love story of two damaged souls. Barry's talent is breath-taking - he is a true original and, once again, words obey his call. This is a propulsive read from a writer at the height of his powers
- MARY COSTELLO,
[<i>The Heart in Winter </i>is] an Irish western, by turns funny and tragic, full of typically outrageous figures and sublime writing
- ALEX PRESTON, * Observer *
Such a great read, so warm and so completely engaging of the reader's feelings
- MIKE McCORMACK,
<b>Praise for Kevin Barry: </b>Barry is a clairvoyant narrator of the male psyche and a consistent lyrical visionary
* Guardian *
One of the most abundantly talented novelists writing today
* Daily Telegraph *
If prose were gold and diamonds there'd be thousands of hell-bent prospectors heading for the Black Hills of Kevin Barry's glistening, sparkling novel
- SEBASTIAN BARRY,
Barry is such a deft and generous writer
* New York Times *
A NEW STATESMAN FICTION HIGLIGHT OF 2024
A GUARDIAN BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024
AN IRISH TIMES FICTION TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024
October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers.
Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .
The Heart in Winter is a savagely funny, achingly beautiful tale set in the Wild West.