Review of THE HEART OF WINTER by Jonathan Evison

 4 Stars

This novel is a portrait of a 70-year marriage – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The book opens with the celebration of Abe Winter’s 90^th birthday, the one Abe thinks will be his final one. His wife Ruth and their three adult children gather at the family home on Bainbridge Island. But shortly afterwards it is Ruth’s mortality that comes to the fore when she is diagnosed with a malignant tumour that requires surgery and promises a difficult recovery. Ruth has always been the caregiver but Abe now insists on caring for her. Will he be able to manage?

The reader is shuttled between past and present. In the present, the focus is on Ruth’s health and Abe’s struggles to care for his wife. In the flashbacks, we see the beginning of their relationship. The two are very much opposites: Ruth is progressive and outspoken, and “free-spirited, curious, adventurous” whereas Abe is staid and conservative: Ruth thinks he “was born middle-aged” and describes him as “Fair. Not bad. Bland, and white, and tasteless as a bowl of chowder. Never enough pepper.” On their first meeting, Abe is smitten but Ruth is not in the least interested. Abe wins her over and they marry. As an insurance salesman, he becomes the family breadwinner, while Ruth, the poetry lover, becomes a housewife and mother. What we see is their long marriage: how they survive the mundanity and challenges of daily life, personal struggles, and a tragedy.

This is a very relatable book. It has both tender and heart-breaking moments. Ruth and Abe face challenges and tragedy. Like any couple, they drift apart, though they also succeed in coming back together. I loved the authenticity of the marriage. I also appreciated the humourous touches which lighten the sometimes sombre mood. Abe thinks Bob Dylan “sounds like a jackass in heat” and Ruth thinks, “To watch Abe trying to navigate the Holy Bible, it might have been the Shenyang phone book.”

Both Ruth and Abe are realistic characters, basically good but certainly flawed. Abe, for instance, is a “stellar provider but absentee husband and father” while Ruth looks after her husband and children but crosses boundaries. The book also shows the dynamic with adult children. Anne, Kyle and Maddie love their parents but Abe observes, “It seemed a cruel arrangement that one’s children, the very nurslings who once drooled on your shirt collar and threw up on your lapel, who wet the bed and crapped on the floor, those helpless lumps of adipose who depended upon you for every little comfort, nay, for their very survival, one day grew into sanctimonious, domineering, irredeemable despots, hell-bent on infantilizing you as though it were the natural order.”

I imagine that most married people will agree with the observations about marriage. Ruth comments that “a marriage requires maintaining, and amending, for it is more than a binding commitment, it is a process, one that demands participation, a willingness to absorb, to accept, to reassess” and that marriage is a compromise because “Sometimes it was necessary to acquiesce, to tolerate and accept the beliefs or needs of others to achieve harmony.”

Though the book is not fast-paced or action-packed, I enjoyed it and found it heart-warming and moving. And it offers wisdom not just for marriages but for all relationships.