A place called winter

They had, none of them, Harry suspected, asked to be there, grateful though they were. They were his human toys, taken from the dirty box on a whim, and could be thrust back into darkness and neglect just as casually if they somehow failed to interest or satisfy.

It almost feels futile to attempt to write a review for this one, mostly because I already know I won't be able to completely convey just how deeply this book has affected me over the past few days. Yet I still feel compelled to at least try, to allow me to say 'goodbye' to these characters and move on if nothing else.

I came across this title on some recommendation list or another a while back, read the synopsis, took away "gay western romance" and said, "Sounds awesome, I'm in." But that's a gross oversimplification to the point of being misleading. I'd hesitate to call it a "western" because the first third of the book takes place in Edwardian London before jumping the pond and landing in the Saskatchewan frontier, and from that point on it's more focused on sustenance farming than anything with a 'cowboys and Indians' vibe. And "romance" doesn't feel like an apt descriptor either because the main love interest doesn't even appear until more than halfway through the book, and even then he's not given much 'screentime' for lack of a better word because the story isn't about him. Rather, it follows a central character and the key turning points of his life.

The story begins with Harry, the protagonist, being transferred from a - frankly horrific - mental institution to a sort of experimental compound where other patients like him are free to roam without guards, circa 1919-ish. The altruistic psychologist who is running the place explains that he's trying a new approach to studying and helping those affected by mental illnesses, but everyone there is aware of the unspoken power dynamic. This doctor tries to help Harry overcome a mild bout of amnesia through hypnosis, and we as the reader learn his life's story that led up to that point, occasionally jumping back to the 'present' at the compound every few chapters or so.

I loved Harry as a character, which is not something I would expect to say about someone who's introduced as effectively a spoiled trust fund baby who never had to work or make a hard decision in his life. But after an inciting incident forces him save face by going into the self-imposed exile of becoming a colonist in rural Canada, he bucks up and actually makes a go of it. He's horrible at it at first, of course, but I appreciated that the effort was made at all from someone you'd expect to give up at the first sign of struggle.

It's been a long time since I've like a main character as much as this, and in fact, I liked every single named character in this book, even the obvious antagonist who periodically shows up like a hungry wolf, pacing and watching from just beyond the safety of the firelight. At no point was there a scene where a certain character appeared that had me enduring them and wanting to move on to the next; they all just worked for me. They're easily the reason why I got so invested and why their (sometimes tragic) fates keep resonating with me after putting the book down.

This was a surprisingly atmospheric book. The isolation Harry experiences when he first arrives at his assigned plot of land in the middle of a cold prairie is palpable, and you feel just alone as he does when he realizes he's the only person around for miles. The constant descriptions of physical labor eventually become therapeutic (no doubt because I'm not the one doing it) and it's easy to forget that you've gone multiple pages without a single line of dialogue. But as Harry begins to venture beyond the limits of his property and meet his new neighbors, the locals are just as enamored with the newcomer with an English accent as he is with them and I quickly grew to enjoy them in kind.

Ultimately when the romance proper begins, it was handled in such an unbelievably tender manner that it had me clutching my gay little heart multiple times. It wasn't graphic or salacious - what few sex scenes there were were sort of 'fast-forwarded' through, for which I'm strangely thankful - but rather it was a series of subtle actions that could be misconstrued as merely friendly if one didn't know how to read between the lines. A sort of relationship hiding in plain sight, in the face of a society that would neither accept nor understand it, carried out by characters who lacked the modern verbiage to accurately describe what they felt or why. This facet of the book was very humbling, and reminded me not to take for granted that not only am I able to live publicly with my own relationship, but that I possess the level of self-understanding to not feel conflicted about that aspect of myself.

It could be argued that there was a happy ending, though it was ultimately a pyrrhic, costly victory to get to that point. I don't know that I'd consider the book as a whole to be particularly uplifting because there was a lot of hardship in the middle and end, but I absolutely don't regret giving this story my time. The very last scene of this book is one that I will remember for probably the rest of my life, and - acknowledging that it's still emotionally fresh for me - I don't know that I'll ever be able to recall it without choking up.