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The Heart in Winter

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The Heart in Winter

By: Kevin Barry
Narrated by: Kevin Barry
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About this listen

 A GUARDIAN BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024
A NEW STATESMAN FICTION HIGLIGHT OF 2024
AN OBSERVER FICTION TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024
AN IRISH TIMES FICTION TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024

What if we ride out tonight?
What if we ride out and never once look back?

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 . . .©2024 Kevin Barry (P)2024 Canongate Books Genre Fiction Historical Fiction World Literature Heartfelt Scary Tear-jerking Thought-Provoking Montana

Critic reviews

'Kevin Barry lights out for the territory and once again comes back with a shining nugget of gold. The Heart in Winter 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)
All stars
Most relevant
Mr Barry will drag you ( effin drag you) into a world not so long past and not so far away, a love story a story of hope . no plot giveaway s from me but ....Wonderful yarn of
the old very wild west. The authors narration is outstanding.

A must listen/ read experience.

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There are very few writers who could create a love story set in the Wild West and make it so real and raw and beautiful and rip-roaringly funny but Kevin Barry has managed it. Absolutely wonderful.

Utterly Brilliant

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Kevin Barry has an exceptional view of the world and is a masterful, if not off-kilter, story teller. His narration adds a further dimension and Irish intensity underpinned by a sardonic sense of humour. Genius

Absorbing tale

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I had high hopes for this but it's not really what I was expecting. Not so much a love story, but a tale of odd characters the protagonists met on the frontier.

Not for me

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A road story in sweet Irish words. It is a long poem. The voice is magic.

Lovely poetic turn of phrase

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