A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale - Review by Mark Cornelius
This is a book about Harry Cane. No not that one! The book pre-dates the Tottenham striker’s fame, and it’s Cane not Kane. Harry was a real person, who lived around the start of the twentieth century. He was a great-grandfather of the author, Patrick Gale. Nevertheless, it is a work of fiction rather than a history, even though many of the events in the book actually happened.
The book tells Harry’s story covering a large part of his life. It is a story of Harry’s sexuality and its consequences. Harry is rich. He went to Harrow. He spends a lot of time idling his life away, until his brother meets a woman. Harry is so lacking in imagination that he marries the woman’s sister. Harry and his wife have a daughter, Patrick Gale’s grandmother. But Harry is gay. He begins a clandestine relationship with an elocution teacher. It is discovered. And because of the distorted morality of the time, he is told by his in-laws to leave England and never return.
He becomes a farmer in Canada. It is a sad tale. Harry has to endure many terrible experiences. He spends some time in a hospital for the mentally ill – no spoiler alert, as you know this on page 1. But it is this catalogue of injustice that makes the book so readable. Understanding what it was like to be a gay man in Edwardian England and Canada is enlightening and shaming for us as human beings. It is given added poignancy by the fact that it is a true story. Moreover, Patrick Gale has done considerable research about how male sexuality was viewed during that period. There is even a bibliography if you’re interested! It’s also worth reading for the story of settlers starting out in a new land, with all the pitfalls and successes they may face. There is a more-than-passing reference to the flu epidemic of 1918-19, which has extra resonance for us to today, though not in 2015, when Gale wrote it.
It is all very easy to read. Gale’s prose flows very smoothly. However, the book does have flaws. Chief among them is Harry’s lack of emotion. The catalogue of terrible things that happen to Harry would have left me crying, nay shrieking, at the injustice and unfairness of it all. Harry merely shrugs his shoulders. He does shed the odd tear, but not the small lake I would have expected. He tries to show emotion, but even that is pretty ineffective. When he professes his love for his first male lover, Harry has to admit that he doesn’t know the man’s eye-colour, his birthday, or even his age. Perhaps it’s intentional on Gale’s part to drain Harry of emotion. After all, Harry has spent a lifetime masking his sexuality, even if he didn’t realise himself for most of it. Also he went to public school. But such a deliberate move by the author seems unlikely; there is a sentence mid-way through the book which suggests Gayle thinks that Harry is a very emotional character. Harry’s “usually lively emotions have been numbed” by the back-breaking tedious work of farming. Perhaps Gayle found it hard to ascribe emotions to a real relation of his who he never met.
I read one review of this book which said, “you'll close the book much wiser on human nature than you were, when you opened it”. I think that is true, and what better tribute to pay the author than that.