Another random grab from the library shelves. I'm not sure exactly what to rate this book or exactly what I should rate. The writing is beautiful. I explained to a friend that it is like watching an indie film that is low-budget and uses complex language. The words being said sound so beautiful and profound, but when you actually think about what was said, you realize that it didn't really make sense. That's how I felt after the first story. The second story and on had more "simple" language, I guess. I was just bored throughout the entire book. I am probably coming across as someone who doesn't appreciate a well written book. I do, but this just was not my cup of tea. While I commend the author's eloquence, the subject matter left something to be desired. This coming from someone who has experienced the great love of a husband and the indescribable love of a child, both of which were subjects of the stories. Simon Van Booy's 'Love Begins in Winter' occupies that beautiful, strange, dreamlike realm between realism and romanticism, never foraying too strongly into the unbelievable and yet meditating on the beauty that reverberates from an unseen plane. Characters with certain personality flaws borne of traumatic experiences are all nonetheless burning with the primal, raw power of the heart.Van Booy writes for the awakening soul -- not the earthbound, the docile, nor for the folks who know themselves down to their shoelaces. Van Booy writes for those among us who aren't quite sure about all of this -- life, love, art, grief, suffering, passion, joy. Hand in hand, you walk with Van Booy, not behind him, meeting each character just enough to love them and not enough to become lost in their life, as you're initiated into the mysteries that reach to the essence of life. Speaking of the essence of life sounds cliche even as I type it, but the more I think about it the more appropriate it sounds. The difference is between reading about an epiphany in a story, and the story provoking an epiphany in the reader.Simon Van Booy is the first of a new race of artists who have inherited the despair of the Modernists, yearn like our forerunners to reawaken the spirit of Western civilization, and yet Van Booy refuses to abandon his faith in the spirit of common men and women, that what is most beautiful in human nature can never be lost.
Do You like book L'amour Commence En Hiver (2012)?
The first story in this collection was really beautiful, but the other four were just OK.
—johnsmith1
Elegant. Soulful. Heartbreaking. One of the most evocative writers at work today.
—mesha_gayew
This book is so beautiful it takes my breath away!
—gracey
