Michael Winter graced the cover of The Gobe and Mail's Books section this weekend (September 1, 2007).
The review inside by T. F. RIGELHOF of Michael's new book The Architects are Here put Winter in the company of Henry James (see below).
FICTION
Excursions, in friendship
T. F. RIGELHOF
September 1, 2007
THE ARCHITECTS ARE HERE
By Michael Winter
Viking Canada,
371 pages, $34
'The novel can do simply everything," Henry James wrote under the heading, The Future of the Novel, more than 100 years ago. He was both stating a fact about the form - "its elasticity is infinite" - and issuing a challenge to would-be novelists to be as "various and vivid" as life itself.
What Henry James wrote then is worth remembering now when you read Michael Winter's The Architects Are Here, because this flamboyant gem of a novel is so wide-angled and crowded with dramatic incident that it's likely to stretch even an unusually generous reader's literate mind and loving heart beyond normal limits. He attempts to do more of everything with far fewer words than James was wont to use on anything.
What Henry James wrote then is worth remembering now when you read Michael Winter's The Architects Are Here, because this flamboyant gem of a novel is so wide-angled and crowded with dramatic incident that it's likely to stretch even an unusually generous reader's literate mind and loving heart beyond normal limits. He attempts to do more of everything with far fewer words than James was wont to use on anything.
Winter is a writer who embraces adult life and examines sexual relations in just the sort of straightforward ways that James insisted novelists must do to enlarge, rather than diminish, our sense of human possibility - that is, by getting outside the bed and the bedroom and into the daylight side of life even when the sun is weak and occluded.
(to read the entire review click here)
In addition to his new novel Michael has an unabridged audio edition of The Big Why upcoming from Rattling Books this fall, narrated by Robert Joy.
