The Coming Of Winter

David Adams Richards has been awarded both of Canada's national literary prizes for his work in the novel:  the Governor General's (1988), and the Giller (2000).  But before the prizes there was a first novel, The Coming Of Winter (1974).

It took me only a few chapters with Winter to realize how so early in his career, Richards had marked out his fictional territory, and found the voice to write about it.  Richards's later novels would become both more elaborate and emphatic.  But in Winter, Richards was already writing the Miramichi that will draw comparisons to Hardy's Wessex and Faulkner's South.

II.

Kevin Dulse is in that uncertain stage between late adolescence and new adulthood.  As Winter opens, we find young Dulse hunting in the Miramichi woods in New Brunswick.  The hunt ends with Kevin shooting and killing a farmer's cow.

Dulse then heads to a local tavern.  There he learns that his friend Andy has been killed in a car accident.  Later, when Andy's death comes up among Dulse's other friends, Bruce and John, Kevin would prefer not to discuss the subject.  "'It doesn't do one bit of good to talk about it'", he says.<1>

Dulse's origins are working class, and he himself has a job at a mill, pouring bags of lime into water, shift after heavy shift.  His girlfriend Pamela is a nurse, and on the sum of their incomes, they plan to marry.  The wedding day concludes the novel.

III.

Winter's prose is of an artful realism.  At its surface, it records the muted and cyclical routines of its setting.  But if you probe deeper into the subtle text, the reader will encounter a speech and a world of understated emotion. It doesn't do one bit of good to talk about it. There is sorrow, rage and loss in Richards's storytelling, as well as humour, joy and love. The Coming Of Winter is a first novel that more than once suggests the poetical through its realism.
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<1>Richards, David Adams. The Coming Of Winter. 1992 Edition:  New Canadian Library, McClelland & Stewart Inc.