
A tale of love and binges and bounty hunters, “The Heart in Winter” is like a Cormac McCarthy novel delivered by the poet the next barstool over.
Set in Montana mining territory in 1891, Kevin Barry’s book introduces us to Tom and Polly, two Irish immigrants who can’t say no to trouble, or each other. Seeing that Polly is a newlywed mail-order bride for a lieutenant in the mining company, this soon sees the pair on the run in the Montana wilderness, setting off with a half-assed plan to make it to California.
This journey blends humor and peril as the lovers amble on their way, mostly oblivious to the danger coming after them. Tom and Polly are likeable but also given to taking the day as it comes, without much foresight. And so they trade songs with French furriers and indulge themselves with magic mushrooms and well-stocked trapper’s cabins. You want to shout at them to hurry, to be serious, but that’s not in their nature…until circumstances oblige them to be.
While Tom and Polly are good for a line and a laugh, they’re obviously shaped by the traumas of famine-era Ireland, old wounds that Barry mostly leaves hinted at. They’re memorable characters, and it’s wrenching to worry whether their fool’s luck can hold up.
A note if you’re starting the book and finding yourself turned off by the stream-of-consciousness binge in the first chapter: things pick up once Polly appears, so I’d give it a little more time if you’re considering quitting.
Quotes
“The deathhauntedness of the Irish brethren was frequently a complication in the working life of Sheriff Stephen Devane. Soaked in an ambience of death from the cradle, they believed themselves generally to be on the way out, and sooner rather than later, and thus could be inclined to put aside the niceties of the living realm.”
***
“Was this Jed character interferin with you, Polly?”
“So what? So now you’re jealous-minded on an old Scotch that’s dead and gone the best part of twenty years?”
“It’s the way my head turns. I’m sorry about it. It’s a sickness that I have.”
“Okay.”
“I mean try livin this bullshit from the inside out, Poll.”
***
“She lay in the darkness and sermonised against herself. If you are of the kind that throws yourself to the fates of the earth then you better watch out. If you are of the kind that takes notions in a life then you just got to accept all of that life’s capricious outcomes. If you are of the kind that throws all cares to the wind don’t go complainin when suddenly you are off your goddamn feet and spinning out forever in the crazy fucking wind. Now I have no longer the agency of my own affairs, Jesus, and that is a goddamn fact.”