Michael Winter is the author of The Architects Are Here,
which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and This All
Happened, winner of the Winterset Award. He is also the recipient
of the Writers' Trust Notable Author Award.
Patrick deWitt is the critically acclaimed author of the
novels Ablutions: Notes for a Novel, The Sisters Brothers, which
was short–listed for the Booker Prize and most recently Under Major
Domo Minor. Born in British Columbia, he has also lived in
California and Washington, and now resides in Portland, Oregon.
"Michael Winter's The Big Why is a superb novel with grandeur of
emotional depth. This is an important book nearly to the point of
cruelty, wherein the struggle between an individual and his wife
and the larger community remind us again of the immense value of
literature." – Jim Harrison
"A Bravely written novel that shatters the spine of historical
fiction" –Michael Ondaatje
"[T]his is a highly entertaining and ultimately profound novel of a
quixotic man who reveres nature's awful beauty."– Kirkus (starred
review)
"[An] exceptionally fine novel
Winter brilliantly exposes his
subject's inner life while at the same time revealing Newfoundland
and the inhabitants of Brigus to be just as idiosyncratic as the
artist who is observing them."
The Boston Globe
"Think Henry James filtered through James Ellroy." The Buffalo
News
"Michael Winter gives us boat–loads of insight into the
contradictory mind and heart of Rockwell Kent
I highly recommend
The Big Why for Winter's robust style and unusual way of presenting
historical fiction."
Santa Cruz Sentinel
"Winter expertly outlines his protagonist's psychological nuances,
[and the] dialogue is uniformly trenchant and humorous. Kent's
discussions with his friend and mentor, Gerald, take on the glow of
a modern Socratic dialogue or an intellectual improv routine, and
Kent's wife, Kathleen, comes vividly to life. Winter gives us a
flesh–and–blood Rockwell Kent." Publisher's Weekly
"[W]onderful
engaging, funny, keenly observed, [and] disarmingly
wise
read–again beautiful."
The Globe and Mail
"[Winter is] a natural writer
he can really grab your attention
and make you feel things
Lovely." National Post
"Make no mistake, The Big Why is the work of a powerful talent, one
of the best and most distinctive younger writers on the
Canadian scene. The novel is a page–turner, not because of its
plot, but because of its clarity and richness of its voice." Quill
& Quire
Winter's spartan novel re–creates an episode in the life of the
American artist Rockwell Kent, who, in 1914, left New York City for
Brigus, Newfoundland, a bleak hamlet populated by fishermen, seal
hunters, and an Arctic explorer. Kent, known in Manhattan as much
for his temper and his philandering as for his woodcuts, wanted to
lie low, and spent the winter hunkered down in a pup tent on the
second floor of a freezing borrowed house. Before long, Kent began
to attract suspicion as a possible German spy. (Among other things,
he professed a love of German music and wrote "Bomb Shop" in Gothic
letters on his studio door.) The next year, he was deported.
Winter, who grew up in Newfoundland, creates a frugal voice for
Kent's conversations with himself—ornery, reflective, intimate,
lewd—and in doing so constructs an indelible portrait of the artist
as outsider. ." The New Yorker
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