It’s been feeling springlike in southern England with plenty of birdsong and flowers, yet cold weather keeps making periodic returns. (For my next instalment of wintry reads, I’ll try to attract some snow to match the snowdrops by reading three “Snow” books.) Today I have a novel drawing on a melancholy Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale and a nature/travel book about learning to appreciate winter.
The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham (2014)
It was among my favourite first lines encountered last year: “A celestial light appeared to Barrett Meeks in the sky over Central Park, four days after Barrett had been mauled, once again, by love.” Barrett is gay and shares an apartment with his brother, Tyler, and Tyler’s fiancée, Beth. Beth has cancer and, though none of them has dared to hope that she will live, Barrett’s epiphany brings a supernatural optimism that will fuel them through the next few years, from one presidential election autumn (2004) to the next (2008). Meanwhile, Tyler, a stalled musician, returns to drugs to try to find inspiration for his wedding song for Beth. The other characters in the orbit of this odd love triangle of sorts are Liz, Beth and Barrett’s boss at a vintage clothing store, and Andrew, Liz’s decades-younger boyfriend. It’s a peculiar family unit that expands and contracts over the years.
Of course, Cunningham takes inspiration, thematically and linguistically, from Hans Christian Andersen’s tale about love and conversion, most obviously in an early dreamlike passage about Tyler letting snow swirl into the apartment through the open windows:
He returns to the window. If that windblown ice crystal meant to weld itself to his eye, the transformation is already complete; he can see more clearly now with the aid of this minuscule magnifying mirror…
I was most captivated by the early chapters of the novel, picking it up late one night and racing to page 75, which is almost unheard of for me. The rest took me significantly longer to get through, and in the intervening five weeks or so much of the detail has evaporated. But I remember that I got Chris Adrian and Julia Glass vibes from the plot and loved the showy prose. (And several times while reading I remarked to people around me how ironic it was that these characters in a 2014 novel are so outraged about Dubya’s re-election. Just you all wait two years, and then another eight!)
I fancy going on a mini Cunningham binge this year. I plan to recommend The Hours for book club, which would be a reread for me. Otherwise, I’ve only read his travel book, Land’s End. I own a copy of Specimen Days and the library has Day, but I’d have to source all the rest secondhand. Simon of Stuck in a Book is a big fan and here are his rankings. I have some great stuff ahead! (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com)
While the Earth Holds Its Breath: Embracing the Winter Season by Helen Moat (2024)
Like many of us, Moat struggles with mood and motivation during the darkest and coldest months of the year. Over the course of three recent winters overlapping with the pandemic, she strove to change her attitude. The book spins short autobiographical pieces out of wintry walks near her Derbyshire home or further afield. Paying closer attention to the natural spectacles of the season and indulging in cosy food and holiday rituals helped, as did trips to places where winters are either a welcome respite (Spain) or so much harsher as to put her own into perspective (Lapland and Japan). My favourite pieces of all were about sharing English Christmas traditions with new Ukrainian refugee friends.
There were many incidents and emotions I could relate to here – a walk on the canal towpath always makes me feel better, and the car-heavy lifestyle I resume on trips to America feels unnatural.
Days are where we must live, but it didn’t have to be a prison of house and walls. I needed the rush of air, the slap of wind on my cheeks. I needed to feel alive. Outdoors.
I’d never liked the rain, but if I were to grow to love winters on my island, I had to learn to love wet weather, go out in it.
What can there be but winter? It belongs to the circle of life. And I belonged to winter, whether I liked it or not. Indoors, or moving from house to vehicle and back to house again, I lost all sense of my place on this Earth. This world would be my home for just the smallest of moments in the vastness of time, in the turning of the seasons. It was a privilege, I realised.
However, the content is repetitive such that the three-year cycle doesn’t add a lot and the same sorts of pat sentences about learning to love winter recur. Were the timeline condensed, there might have been more of a focus on the more interesting travel segments, which also include France and Scotland. So many have jumped on the Wintering bandwagon, but Katherine May’s book felt fresh in a way the others haven’t.
With thanks to Saraband for the free copy for review.
Any wintry reading (or weather) for you lately?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
A trip to Spain definitely sounds on the cards at the moment. London is just grey, grey and then some more grey. Plus freezing.
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Yes, it’s been an awfully grey and chilly time. But on the occasional sunny day the snowdrops and crocuses look gorgeous and the birds are busy!
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I’m not such a huge Cunningham fan as Simon but I did love Flesh and Blood, Home at the End of the World and Day. What a shame about the Moat.
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I’m keen on all of those. Flesh and Blood is Simon’s number 3 (after the two novels I’ve already read).
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I’ve enjoyed a couple of Saraband books so I’m sorry this one didn’t quite work for you.
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I’ve not had good luck with them recently but I’m interested in their ‘In the Moment’ series.
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Yeah, I know Simon is a huge Cunningham fan; I’ve only read The Hours, and that long ago. Can’t imagine what his other books would be like based on that, really. My wintriest read recently has been The Pickwick Papers—partly because Dickens feels intrinsically wintry and partly because it’s got a few really wonderful chapters set at Christmas! I wasn’t expecting to love it, but I did.
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Dickens does seem inherently wintry; something to get stuck into during a long evening by a fire. It makes me all the sadder that I haven’t been able to read him for a decade or more; I just seem allergic to Victorian doorstoppers. (And me with an MA in Victorian Literature.)
I think The Hours is probably quite different to his other work. Simon emphasizes the themes of family dynamics and community/chosen family in a lot of the other novels. I think of Cunningham as being similar to Patrick Gale, Alan Hollinghurst (whom I’ve not read) and Colm Tóibín, though maybe it’s too facile to group them together as homosexual writers of roughly the same generation.
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Those comps for Cunningham make sense, and I’ve liked what little Gale and Hollinghurst I’ve read. Don’t worry about Dickens! Tastes change.
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For no particular reason, it’s ages since I’ve read a Cunningham book. Time to revisit I think. Sorry that the Moat review ends on a disappointing note. Up till then, it had sounded A Good Read.
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Day was his first novel in nearly a decade.
The Moat was fine — one to pick up if your library has a copy.
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I doubt I would identify with the Moat. My mood and energy drop in summer 🤷♀️
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How interesting! I definitely find the heat enervating, but the long hours of daylight are a boon.
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I hate long days 😂 makes me feel like I’m always ‘on’ and can’t chill out
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I’d be interested in checking out the Moat, as you know that I’ve been on a journey wrestling with winter as well. And that cover is lovely!
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I’m not sure it it’s available outside the UK. It does chime with Wintering and some other books on that theme that have come out recently.
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I am a big Cunningham fan too but rate his earliest ones highest, although I did recently really enjoy Day. We go to Spain twice a winter now for this reason, as Matthew gets really bad SAD, so we do the start and end (October and Feb / March) to take the edge off. The Moat looked promising but a shame it’s repetitive and a bit pat at times.
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It’s always interesting to me to see which contemporary novelists you and Simon love, as you read so few in general compared to nonfiction and/or classics.
I got hold of a mini SAD lamp before the start of this winter, but haven’t used it much so far.
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Weirdly (or not!) Simon and I share a few modern loves, Cunningham and Magnus Mills being two that spring to mind!
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Thanks for linking, and so glad to see the prospect of a Cunningham adventure! I won’t say which are my favourites, as you already know 😀 – though I think Day has come out since I wrote that list. I’d put it pretty high, maybe #4.
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Lots to look forward to!
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You know that I am loving the seasonal reading and your own habit of regularly sharing yours certainly helped to motivate me to resume that habit myself. We still have plenty of snow here, even though it had been above zero for nearly a week now, but the forecast is for rain on the weekend. (I love the snow, and the winter, so I never complain about that and I shall be sorry to see it go, but it was also exceptionally lovely to see one of the little chipmunks emerge yesterday afternoon for the first time this year.) Never mind: I have my spring selections at the ready. I would love to join in a Cunningham binge, but I am not to be trusted with it, am I. heh And I am still not back to the library, so perhaps I should bite my proverbial tongue.
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The temperatures have been up and down here, but I’m going to squeeze in a few last snow-titled reviews this week before the official start of spring.
Aww, a chipmunk! How cute. I used to love seeing those in my parents’ backyard.
Next up will be Specimen Days. Not sure when I will start it, but let me know if you wish to join!
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