Which brings us to my yearly pilgrimage into Winter Fiction. I've broadened my search from holiday fiction to simply anything with snow in it.
Enter Cathie Pelletier. I love her and her three book series about the inhabitants of up up up state Maine so much I put off reading the third and final book for almost a year. As it turns out, it is about winter.
However, the title is The Weight of Winter so I think we know that it isn't going to be sugary story telling.
My two favorite quotes actually have nothing to do with snow or winter or Christmas.
First:
"Maybe I like to remember her because I was still young myself, and things still meant something to me. After a lot of years of life go by, you get kind of like an old badger. You get a shell-like heart, and you back your way into a corner and show everyone your teeth."
Second:
"...I got more time to think, maybe that's when things seemed to sour before my eyes. It's a dangerous thing, you know, too much time to think. It can twist and turn your mind. But I got to say it now - before my mind turned, there was some awful good times."
I smile, nostalgic with a twinge of melancholy, at these words. A sigh is almost needed after you read them. An affirmation of the bittersweet truth life offers us.
Don't worry, there was snow description as well:
"You think you know about snow? Well, let me tell you about moonlight nights in the blue of January that come right out of dreams. They're too blue, too crackling with cold to be real. That's when the pines would be all crusted with snow, just like they was baked that way. And all the needles would be glistening like glass. Up overhead you could see Orion shimmering, the buckle on his belt so cold your fingers would stick to it if you could touch it."
Ahhhh winter. Makes a girl want to knit. Or read. More.
"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."
Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth
I like the second quote. It reminds me of my grandpa. I remember walking into rooms where he was sitting and asking him what he was doing (because when you're eight you can't imagine sitting still for more than thirty seconds). He would just say "I'm just thinking. Lots of time to think."
ReplyDeleteHe said that when people got as old as he was there was more in the past to think about than in the future so there was lots to keep him occupied.
I can relate to that snow too, we won't have a white Christmas out here,, but we rarely do.