THE WINTERING

by Joan Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 1971

From its thematic material, one might assume this was a first novel if one could forget -- and many will not -- Joan Williams' strong The Morning and the Evening. As it is, thematic material is a pretty hoitytoity term for what is a washed out book, almost as impalpable as its Southern slurring of slow time. Amy, twenty, is just a bud (probably forsythia since there are endless referrals to forsythia throughout) who is supposed to bloom both as a woman and a writer under the tutelage of a prominent local novelist, Jeffrey Almoner. But Amy is both too tentative and indecisive (and so actually is the older Jeffrey who finds her ""brief, tender and touching as spring""), to lend much definition to their progress together and apart. And then there's the sentiment Jeffrey says the modern world will no longer indulge; they won't. It's only for a retrospective few who have ""anguished the same anguishments.

Pub Date: April 7, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1971

Categories: FICTION