Shira NaymanCritiques

Interesting psychological thriller. It was enjoyable but predictable. I love period pieces and this one does not disappoint..

Beautifully written, an intense psychological mystery/journey. Covering the period of World War II and the decade after, the story moves back and forth in time, across continents, narrated in turn by three of the main characters. At least two of the characters appear to be running as fast as they can from their past lives. The mystery to be solved is who, what and how they will escape.

The novel deals with hard to take subjects, but if the reader can persevere, the story is ultimately one of redemption and determination. A tough read, but a rewarding one.

Serious minded novel that attempts to delve into the minds of its characters as they struggle to deal with surviving WW2. Maybe a bit too serious and overly complex in its weaving of multiple story lines. Held my interest for awhile but ultimately did not take me somewhere new.

Separate yet, ultimately, interconnected stories of 3 characters in pre-WWII Shanghai, London and New York. I really only liked the 1st part - entitled, and about, Christine - which takes place in Shanghai. Perhaps it's because the other 2 locations are more familiar to me, but I just found the writing to be ...richer.... in its evocation of Shanghai and the characters that populate that part of the book. The novel itself just seemed to tail off after that part.... until the very end when the interconnectedness of the stories began to become clear.½

A Mind of Winter was a very interesting read, but it really took until the ending to figure out how the three characters related to each other. Each character's section could almost be read as a standalone, and would have made for interesting linked novellas. Overall, it is rather evocative of other literary works yet still unique in its own right.

This book is an ambitious story of three characters interwoven lives following the horrors of surviving WWII. However, the grandness of its scope cannot match its actual execution. The book only has 2 modes: overwrought exposition and intense rumination. Every new scene's setting needs to be painted in heavy layers of ambience and tone, though sometimes delivered in a rather poetic if often redundant language about light and shadows. Meanwhile, every character is overly burdened by their conscience. The first protagonist alone seemingly suffers from every possible existential crisis imaginable, from moral, sexual, romantic, narcotic, of identity, etc. I feel that the entire package is a bit heavy, but I could easily see some who prefer this type of pensive, introspective, romantic and historical literature.½

The title comes from a poem, "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens:
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

As a Canadian I guess I could be said to, literally, have a mind of winter. The characters in this novel, though, aren't Canadian and quite a bit of the action takes place in warm climates. So their mind of winter is not literal, it is figurative. I'm still thinking about that and I suppose that is what the author, any author, wants when a reader reads their work.

This is a beautifully written work about flawed people. First we meet Oscar, a rich man living on Long Island who is being investigated for war crimes. He mentions the other three main characters, Christine, Marilyn and Barnaby. Christine is in his past but he loves her still. Marilyn is in the present and she reminds him of Christine. Barnaby is also in the present and he and Marilyn become lovers. All of the novel takes place in the 1950's so everyone's war experiences are still very fresh in their minds. All four of the characters were in London during the war. Oscar worked in a brokerage house where he did very well; Christine was a teacher; Marilyn was a photographer; Barnaby worked in an office. Oscar and Christine met at a language school but neither of them met Marilyn then. It seems as if Christine and Barnaby knew each other in London but that's never explained very well.

Christine is living in Shanghai in 1947 and she becomes addicted to opium. Barnaby is also living there doing something with the British consulate. Barnaby and Christine are lovers. However, when Christine runs out of money she disappears and Barnaby becomes quite frantic. It turns out Christine is a teacher to young Chinese girls in a high-class brothel run by Han Shu. Han Shu keeps Christine supplied with opium with the expected result that Christine becomes more dependent.

In 1951 Oscar invites Barnaby to his Long Island mansion to recuperate from an illness he developed in Africa. Oscar also invites Marilyn and her husband, Simon, to the estate for a weekend. Marilyn is a welcome addition and she and Simon are welcomed back on successive weekends. During one of these Barnaby and Marilyn become lovers although Marilyn is still desperately in love with Simon.

This book is essentially a mystery about whether Oscar is a war criminal but I think the other narratives overwhelm this storyline. I don't know that we really needed the part about Marilyn and Barnaby's love affair. To me that just muddies the waters.

Would I read another book by Shira Nayman? Probably because the writing is beautiful and the characters were interesting. I would hope that as she keeps writing she will become better at paring a book down to the essentials.½

This is a book of short stories, superbly written. Each story is a tale of the holocaust seen through the eyes of the children of the survivors. The most powerful story is The House o fKronenstrasse wherein a daughter who, after her mother dies, returns to Germany. Seeking her childhood home, she discovers a powerful secret.

Recommended!

I adored Shira Nayman's earlier work "Awake in the Dark: Stories" so I was looking forward to this work. I found it readable and entertaining but nowhere near as captivating as her first work.½

Review based on ARC.

I was initially intrigued by this book because its title and brief description made me think of reading a cozy psychological thriller. Fortunately, Nayman moves the reader seamlessly into an intriguing story. I say fortunately because there are portions of the book that don't move the reader along as effortlessly as others, but the initial intrigue of Oscar's situation drives the reader through those less exciting portions.

You can read the basic description of the book in other reviews & on the book jacket, but very briefly, Nayman presents a story of mystery and intrigue through the perspectives of Oscar and two women in his life, Christine and Marilyn. Oscar may have committed some horrible crime and may be the victim of mistaken identities, or perhaps both. Christine is his love who has left upon discovery of his crime, and Marilyn is his companion, a war photographer who enjoys the life of his mansion and his parties (it is this part that seems to remind people of the Great Gatsby, though I find Nayman's portrayals more interesting).

Oscar's incredibly brief introduction somewhat sets the stage for the reader to be pulled into the overall story. But the book truly starts with Christine, after she has left Oscar, after she has become addicted to Opium, and near her point of desperation. Nayman flits between past and present with ease, and I even thought at one point that the book, written by a lesser writer, would have left me confused and annoyed. Instead, Christine's tale is convincing and understood, artfully written and non-gratuitously told. I felt that Nayman was a little brilliant in her ability to present Christine so well, despite my discomfort with some of the subject matter (for you more sensitive readers, please know that this story involves various types of sexual assault, but Nayman does not gratuitously divulge the details).

Then we are rather abruptly moved to Marilyn's main story. It is abrupt largely because it is so very different from where we are left at the end of Christine's "chapter." There is some darkness, but Marilyn is not currently staggering through the darkness, which is (essentially) where we left Christine. As others have stated, her portion is, overall, the least moving, but it serves its purpose in the book. I'm not yet sure if I would have preferred more depth into Marilyn's character, or a quicker foray...

And we are finally reintroduced to Oscar. The discovery, the tied up loose ends, the conclusion... well I like satisfying ends. I know it's trendy to leave the reader frustrated, but I appreciate a writer who is willing to actually conclude a tale. It does not, of course, conclude the lives of the characters therein, but it leaves the reader with a sense of satisfaction. I appreciated Nayman's decision and felt she did a nice job of wrapping up this dark and anxious tale.

Overall, a thoughtful read, a dark read. I recommend to people seeking something more challenging -- particularly more emotionally challenging.½

"A Mind of Winter is a page-turning, literary psychological thriller that unfolds over three continents." Well, the story does unfold over three continents, however as for being a page turner or psychological thriller, I did not get that from this book.

Overall, I thought the book was well written and I did enjoy the characters, yet for me, this book did not grab my attention. It was easy to put down and hard to start back up. Don't get me wrong, while I was reading it I enjoyed it, but it was not a book I had to read 10 more pages or get to the next chapter or stay up all night reading.

I received [A Mind of Winter] as a LT Early Reviewers book. To be honest, I wasn’t that excited about this book, but it turned out to be very enjoyable and I’m glad I read it.

This novel takes place in the immediate aftermath of WWII. Oscar has moved to America and from the beginning it is made clear that he has changed his identity and that he is hiding something. His story, and his family’s, is gradually revealed along the way. His life is intertwined with two women. Christine is a British woman who he had a relationship with after meeting her through English language classes that she taught to people housed in an Internment Camp that Oscar (named Robert at the time) was part of. Christine leaves England abruptly after seeming to discover something evil in Robert’s past. She travels to Shanghai where she falls deeper and deeper into an opium addiction and seems to be lost. The other woman central to the book is Marilyn, a photographer whose war-time pictures affect Oscar deeply. She is struggling with her own demons, trying to come to terms with the real world behind her photographs.

All of the characters in this book are haunting. The plot is interesting – exotic at times, but also familiar. There are nods to [The Great Gatsby] when Oscar moves to America and sets up a summer estate where he invites friends for the weekend, Marilyn included. The opulence and laziness of that setting definitely reminded me of [Fitzgerald’s] work.

Where the book fails a bit is in the ending. With a book like this, I actually would have liked a few more loose ends to remain. The plot gets tied up a bit too nicely for my taste. I also thought that the characters could have been tied together more strongly – especially getting Marilyn into the main story – and the theme of coincidences could have been more flushed out.

Overall, though, this was a pleasant surprise. There’s a good amount of suspense and it kept my interest to the end.½

I've put off reviewing this book for quite a while, and the characters are still on my mind. To me that means a well written story, memorable in many ways.
First, I love the cover with its intriquing picture. The prologue is wonderful - how a mistaken identity has led to an accusation of a war crime. Then the stories of the two women and Oscar swirl around, not really connecting but still influencing each other.
Yes, in retrospect, this was a very good book, and I will put it on my 'read again' list.

This novel is mostly set in 1951 and describes the paths it’s three main characters have taken in the war's aftermath. Christine, formerly a teacher at a girl's private school in England, has fled to Shanghai, ostensibly after uncovering a horrible secret about the first man she had ever let herself fall in love with. She is a gorgeous woman and used to having men bend over backwards to accommodate her, but Han Shu, the owner of the upscale bar she’s been frequenting decides her credit is no longer valid in his establishment, and Christine, who's come to the last of her meagre teacher-salary savings, is desperately in want of a means to earn a living. Her most pressing need is feeding the opium addiction which has taken over her life, and against her better judgment, she finds herself accepting a job from Han Shu, who hires her to give private instruction in a home he keeps in a run-down neighbourhood, presumably an establishment to help young orphaned girls.

Meanwhile in Long Island, Oscar is a fabulously wealthy man with a sprawling domain on the beachfront, and a house which is always filled with guests. We know little about his past when the story begins, only that he’s an Englishman, that "Oscar" is an assumed identity and that he's never gotten over the aforementioned Christine. As the story evolves, we come to learn about his complicated past, how he built his fortune after the war, and what role Christine played in his life. One semi-permanent fixture in his home is Marilyn, a photographer who’s made a name for herself with the harrowing images captured in London during the war. She escapes from her Manhattan residence weekly to Oscar’s swank retreat to sort out her work and what she fears are too strong feelings for her husband to find some kind of solace in the arms of one of Oscar‘s friends.

I rather enjoyed this complex and mysterious novel and the morally skewed individuals who people it, each with their own reasons to lie and deceive, each with their own share of light and shade. The settings she creates for them are convincing, and they are believable as complex, living, breathing characters, even though at times they seem almost too archetypal. The prose flowed easily, save for a few awkward moments when it seemed Nayman had tried too hard to reach for poetic imagery and came up short, but overall, and unlike many other reviewers, I found this to be a very good novel and well worth my while.

I didn't make it through this one. I had hoped it would eventually draw me in, but I couldn't connect with the voice.

I might try to revisit this book another time, since there were promising aspects. I definitely saw some beautiful language, but for me there was too much description and not enough meat in the plot. Maybe I just didn't give it enough time to develop.

A Mind of Winter is a story of three lost people trying to make sense of the choices they made in the past. Secrets held by both Christine and Robert lead to misunderstandings that drive them apart. Marilyn is lost after her wartime photograph is published. She struggles to find a reason to continue her work and her marriage. Secrets pervade at Ellis Park that lead to misunderstandings, drama and more questions. All of these stories come together with an ending that is at least partly satisfying. Nayman makes good use of her understanding of the human mind as she brings their stories to us. I was compelled to continue reading to discover the secrets but at times found the buildup to be a little less than I expected. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable book.½

The book was extremely promising and had a great start, but the plot seemed off putting sometimes and was a bit difficult to get through. However, I do love the writing style and the characters.

In the wake of World War II, three characters struggle to figure out what about their relationships is real. One is a photographer, whose iconic photo of bombed out London captured the essence of that reality. Since then, she struggles to find the same understanding of the people around her, including her husband, her lover, and her host, one of the other characters. He has changed identities in an attempt to evade his wrongs while he seeks to find his roots. The third, his lost love, redeems her own bad past and subsequent bad choices once she realizes that things aren't always what they seem and that you can create a new reality for yourself. The storyline mostly flows on its own power. I kept wanting to know what happens but neither was it a page-turner. I wish the mysterious elements had either been stronger, or resolved sooner so the thoughts could go deeper in other ways.

I must confess that I had rather high expectations for A Mind of Winter--perhaps too high for both a publisher and an author I had never heard of before the Early Reviewer group. The description of course brought to mind Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (my all-time favorite book), with a dash of Evelyn Waugh and E. M. Forster stirred in. All in all, I found the book to be something of a misfire. I always found myself wanting to know more--more specific/sensory details, more/deeper characterization, more setting, even more scenes. I found that sometimes Nayman showed us things we perhaps didn't need to see, while she seemed to gloss over highly important scenes (for instance, there's no full-fleshed scene of Christine beginning to work with the girls Han Shu's manor, only a brief and coasting summary). At times I had trouble believing lines of dialogue, and from time to time the characters' internal thoughts seemed too sentimental/precious to the author (which I guess is another symptom of weak characterization). There were a few moments of a glowing clarity of real and beautiful style, but for the most part I found myself disappointed in this novel and the stories that it had to tell.

This book got off to a very promising start for me. Nayman's initial narrator (Oscar) said something that gave me an instant feeling of connection. But, after only a few pages with this narrator, and just as things are starting to get interesting, we are abruptly thrust into a new time and place, and given a narrator (Christine) with whom I not only felt no connection, but couldn't even bring myself to be really interested in at all. I was so turned off by this section of the book, that I had a hard time feeling any investment in the the next section, even though I felt at least some connection with this third narrator (Marilyn). Both Christine and Marilyn hint at some dark secret from Oscar's past that they think they know, though both do it in such a jumpy, pseudo-tantalizing fashion that by the time we hear Oscar's voice again I was more relieved that all the games were coming to an end than actually interested in what the secret was.

It's a shame that the story felt so herky-jerky, because I think that if Nayman had kept Oscar's voice as the sole narrator throughout the book her story would have had the emotional impact she was going for. Instead, by throwing in so many extraneous plot points and red herrings (Christine's opium addiction and Marilyn's conflicting feelings about her wartime photography, among others) she's declawed what could have been a powerful story.

This book is about choices. Oscar, Christine, Marilyn and Barnaby are all affected by the choices they make. Oscar by putting on a Nazi uniform to escape persecution, Christine by stopping Robert(Oscar) from telling his story, Marilyn by taking the photograph and Barnaby by being a playboy.
The book as a whole kept me reading to the end, although there were parts that bogged down and were a bit of a struggle to get through. I found myself anticipating outcomes that did not emerge which made me want to continue just to see what the actual outcome was. It was satisfying in the end to have all the different stories explained.
Overall a good read .½

No, I don't think I liked this one, and could only give it a tepid recommendation.

Here's why:
* Of the main characters, Barnaby's story was not told.
* Told first-person from three people, Marilyn and Christine had the same "voice." Thankfully, Oscar's voice was distinct.
* Although set in 1951, the author seems to have rather placed it in the time period of Gatsby or today. (Did any Christmas tree lights have "tiny bulbs" in 1951?)
* I didn't particularly like the characters.

Having said that, Ms. Nayman does compose some beautiful sentences. It's too bad that so large a proportion of sentences had such a large proportion of adjectives. The "mystery" does keep the reader turning pages, but in the end disappoints.

I won this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

It's different, well-written, mysterious, full of heavy atmosphere. There's a line near the end that Oscar asks: "What crime is there in self-preservation?" that encapsulates the novel's exploration. Three characters, Oscar, Marilyn, and Christine (plus Barnaby in everyone's background), are searching for their own way to deal with the circumstances they have been given. Drugs, sex, the blackmarket, are some of the options they explore in London, Shanghai, and Long Island (pre, during, and post- world war II).

The novel is deep and intense, and could certainly be re-read and studied deeply to mine it for all of its nuances and themes. I liked it because it was unexpected and original.

A Mind of Winter is primarily about three main characters, Christine, Marilyn, and Oscar, and their lives in the years after World War II. Over 60 million people died in the war, and death plays an important role in the story. Oscar is haunted by the likely deaths of his family members at the hands of Nazis. Marilyn is haunted by the photo she has taken of a boy in London who has lost his entire family. Christine spends the first part of the book slowly killing herself, unsuccessfully, with opium addiction.

The real story is about the connection between Oscar and Christine and how this story ties them all together. They had been lovers in London after Oscar went there to flee Nazi Germany. A chance discovery by Christine would lead to their separation and Oscar's meeting Marilyn. The nature of this discovery and what happened to Christine after she left Oscar is the ultimate payoff that keeps the reader interested in the novel.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. Most of the characters had some depth and most of the book was compelling enough to keep me reading. The middle section, however, did bog down a bit. The Barnaby character was very superficially drawn. I would have liked to have known more about his back story and how he fit into the lives of the characters outside of simply being someone who knew and loved them all and helped tie them together. Because of this, the middle section that focused almost entirely on Marilyn's relationship with him tended to bog down a bit. I got the sense that Nayman rushed through that section and didn't put as much time into it as the first and third sections of the book. She should have spent more time explaining why Barnaby was the way he was.½

I went into this book expecting (like apparently several others) it to be like Great Gatsby with some other things mixed in. It was similar, with drawn out characters and flowery language, but it didn't quite draw me in as much as I'd hoped. Kind of boring in parts, but not a terrible read overall.