Winter Time

Why do so many South Island writers evoke place so vividly? Maybe it's the iron winters. Or the high, blue-and-gold summers. Or the contrast between the two. . . . They stand insistently in the quiet, accomplished fiction of Laurence Fearnley as well. Winter Time, her new novel – her 11th, I think, so let's pause for some appropriate applause – is immediate with the “frosted breath...mist,” black lakes and white peaks of the Mackenzie Country. . . . Roland is a pretty daring creation. He's loyal, persistent, perceptive but largely ineffectual. He sees a lot, achieves only a little. His vulnerability and intermittent fragility are an intriguing inversion of the trad protagonist and Fearnley uses this adroitly in an increasingly nuanced, nervy plot. . . . As always, Fearnley's prose is precise, spare, springy with cadences of colloquial Kiwispeak, yet resonant with imagery. She's a quiet writer, never showy, building her moods and participants unobtrusively, steadily. There's even the odd and engaging bit of pawky comedy; enjoy the leaking wheat bag. A novel of side roads, both topographical and emotional. Thoughtful motifs of belonging or failing to belong – to places and/or people. Respectful and crafted. All as I'd expect from Laurence Fearnley.

David Hill, Kete Books

Laurence Fearnley has an acute eye for capturing the natural and human worlds, and Winter Time, her latest novel, is no exception. . . . Winter Time – it’s the second in a planned series of books loosely based on the five senses, this one involving touch, so various levels of irony are involved – explores those threads that bind us to others, and what happens when those threads unravel. Fearnley’s keen observations of human frailty, coupled with her evocative natural descriptions, the harsh elements proving a character in their own right, add layers of poignancy to this tenderly harrowing tale. And yet despite Roland’s deep grief, the vindictive social media storm and the savage neighbour with her ancient grudge and greasy mugs, the author’s prose and storytelling skills endow this tale with more than a kernel of hope.

Elisabeth Easther, NZ Listener

Winter Time reads like a love song to the mountains, to the untouched beauty of the natural world. There’s discussion in the novel about the conflict between those who are pro-development and the Nimbys, who want nothing to change, which works neatly with the themes of the destructive properties of nature versus the destructive nature of humans.

Woman

This is an intriguing novel with much of the drama taking place in countryside that will be familiar to South Islanders – the Mackenzie. Laurence Fearnley writes as someone who is more than familiar with the high country, the weather, the landscape, the people, the solitude and the silence. This skill makes for an atmospheric description: you can feel the cold. Place names like Tekapo, Timaru and Aviemore allow the reader to recall as well as to imagine. The novel centres on Roland, brought up near Tekapo, his family, friends and former friends, neighbours old and new, and his overbearing partner Leon in Sydney. He returns to the family home after the unexpected death of his brother, wanting to uncover various truths and to decide on the home and his future. He encounters resentment, opposition and is dangerously set up online with someone posting under his name. Leon continues to manipulate him from afar. Is someone trying to prevent him from finding the truth, to drive him out or to encourage him to sell?

Neville Templeton, Style

The rural Mackenzie Basin becomes both the setting and, in a way, a character in this novel by an award-winning author. An exploration of small-town tensions, as the intentions of hunters and cullers, conservationists and developers come to a head, this witty story reveals how, once entwined, our lives can become connected forever.

Rural Living

I was just thrilled to read this, I think it is just the best novel I have read this year so far . . . it's spectacular, it's wonderful . . . She always writes about people's interior lives in a way that I think is very real . . . She writes very elegantly and to the point about landscape . . . it gives you a real sense of the hardness and the beauty of that landscape and what growing up in it perhaps does to you, so I thought it was a really good balance between this plot, this mystery that's going on and his interior life . . . It is quite something and I felt really connected to the characters and I felt you could meet them and completely understand, and she has captured something really special.

Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb, Radio NZ

Laurence Fearnley's new novel Winter Time has two major strengths, and the first of these is the setting. . . . Her evocation of the snow country is convincing and compelling, drawn from personal experience. . . . Not only is this setting authentic, it mirrors the emotional state of the novel's protagonist, a physical and visual complement to the emotional condition experienced by Roland March, the character whose creation is the second strength of the novel. Roland's winter is not so much one of discontent, but rather sorrow, loneliness and unease. . . . he's such a well-drawn and complex character, with a longing for acceptance and understanding, that our sympathy is engaged. It's a challenge for a woman writer to create such a protagonist, one who carries so much of the novel's weight, and Fearnley has succeeded admirably. She's an experienced and accomplished writer with a command of language that allows her to cope with the considerable demands her highly personal writing imposes. Her skills are well displayed here, especially in her descriptions of the environment and personal relationships. . . . the novel is a success, most obviously because it captures people and place – a place of scents and colours, warmth and cold, wind, trees and birds, sounds, rocks and water, the houses of the people who live there . . . Winter Time is meaningful and challenging, with much unresolved. It's a brave story, and well told. There's a sincerity in all of Laurence Fearnley's work that gives it a special weight and character.

Owen Marshall, newsroom

Written by an award-winning Kiwi novelist, this is a character-driven story with a strong narrative, set in the majestic Mackenzie Basin. . . . The author cleverly links the protagonist's mood with the bitterly cold weather, creating an atmospheric plot that will have you guessing to the end.

Belinda O'Keefe, Latitude