Julius Winsome

I picked up the book Julius Winsome, by Gerard Donovan at the library quite by accident. The picture of the woods on the outside, made me curious. The book is set in the cold woods of Maine where Julius Winsome, a lonely man lives with his dog Hobbs in an isolated log cabin which was left to him by his father. He is surrounded by over 3,000 books formerly belonging to his father, many of which are rare first editions (doesn't this sound wonderful?). ....."Except for my dog I lived on my own, for I had never married, though I think I came near once, and so even the silences were mine. It was a place built around silences." It was this woman(whom he almost married) who prior to her departure for good, helped Julius to find a new companion--- his beloved terrier-mix Hobbes. Julius is happy living alone drinking tea and reading Shakespeare, with his loyal companion by his side. Where the weather is warm he works part time to earn a little money. Except for the sounds of occasional gun fire from hunters in the woods abutting his property, everything is peaceful, just the way Julius likes it. One day all that changes when Julius finds his dog dying from a shotgun blast. The veterinarian tells Julius that whoever shot Hobbes did it up close and probably even patted the dog before firing the fatal shot. But who would do this, and why? As he tries to cope with the loss of Hobbes, he soon becomes obsessed with seeking revenge on whoever shot his dog. ..."What I wanted to say to the man was that I didn't have feeling where I should and too much where I shouldn't. You keep away from men like me and you'll be alright in life". This is a beautifully written, poignant little novel (just over 200 pages) about the dangers of too much isolation and too little love. This book is highly recommended.

Julius Winsome is ideal for winter reading. Spare, evocative prose, and an absolutely gripping narrative, from the first sentence ("I think I heard the shot") right through to the end. Highly recommended!

Gerard Donovan is a poet and it shows on every page of this short novel. Literate prose in brief chapters reveal the history of a lonely man and how he responds to the cruelty of others. Julius Winsome leads an isolated existence in a bleak wilderness in the north Maine woods, just across the river from New Brunswick. Since the death of his father two decades before he has lived alone in a book-filled cabin miles from his nearest neighbor. In summer he ekes out just enough income as a part-time gardener and mechanic to get him through a winter of reading. His 3,282 books isolate him from winter and the world just as in summer a flower garden separates him from the woods and the woods from people. One day a woman walks out of the woods and into his life. He begins to see a new, brighter version of life. She convinces him he should get a dog because a man should not live alone, as he does, in the woods. Shortly after that, without explanation, the woman walks out of his life and he doesn't see her again until after his life is shattered anew and they are both different people. Winsome transfers his affection to the dog and the love is reciprocated and he is, again, satisfied with his life for four years. Then, the dog is purposely shot and killed, shattering his serenity. As he seeks answers to who and why his dog was killed, he finds only more cruelty and it turns him on an unrelenting path of revenge which can have only one outcome. It's a beautiful and haunting novel but, equally, unsettling. Even as we sympathize with his pain and his need for vengeance we must realize just how brittle the line between sane and insane, civilized and uncivilized.

I heard Gerard Donovan read from this novel in Oregon about a month ago; he said it was one of the first times he was doing so in public. His words come out on paper with a tone akin to his speaking manner, measured and precise, densely detailed yet accurately sheared. The quirk that the narrator has-- I suspect symbolism may accompany his two names but no indication of this directly enters the novel-- of speaking with snips of Shakespearean vocabulary to himself and his prey make for a witty and distancing touch. I am uncertain if we are to interpret the narrator's growing obsession with a narrator from, say, a Poe tale. The ending does allow for multiple interpretations, and the book resists the reductive. Donovan, in this his third novel (after Schopenhauer's Telescope, which I obtained along with this one and is my next novel to read, and Doctor Salt, a mordant take-- a hit in Europe but still awaiting publication in the U.S., tellingly -- on the American culture of pharmaceutical self-help and medical diagnoses for non-existent maladies) manages to keep the reader at exactly the right vantage point. The author, like Julius, knows dogs well, and has observed them closely and generously. We empathize with Julius, but do we cheer his pursuits on or recoil from his steady aim? Sympathy for the avenging angel or revulsion at the diabolical cunning? Donovan explained that he sought in this book to explore where grief ends and revenge begins. If your pet was shot, how far would you go to track down the perpetrator? And then, once you were lucky or unlucky enough to capture the culprit, what next? The narrator muses how, once revenge takes solid hold, that he is the rifle, the gun, the bullet, the human made killer. He uses his grandfather's WWI Enfield rifle with which the elder man shot 28 Germans. The workings of the gun, of snipers, and of an educated mind left in the wilderness to ruminate, speculate, and percolate all make for engrossing chapters. At one point, the narrator considers how one man leading another with a weapon pointed in his back is the "oldest arrangement of power." (This vignette also characterizes the showdown in his first novel.) A sniper's vocation is compared to men who feel so much pain themselves that they can only lessen it by hollowing out part of their soul, so as to create pain in others as their only remedy. Such issues lift JN above a genre thriller or an inert character study. It may serve even as an elaboration on the Second Amendment: how might we ethically employ ourselves by taking up arms under the ambiguous freedom granted us by the Constitution? How far could we justify the quest for justice? Similar to his first novel, the primal contention for mastery as the mind grapples against the spirit, the body seeks to outrun the pursuer, elevates this short novel into a rather philosophical realm. But it remains readable, free of cant, absent of posturing. I read this in a single sitting. Donovan's poetic

Set in far northern Maine near the New Brunswick border, this exceedingly dark and precise novel examines what happens when a loner's territory is encroached upon. The simple story is told from within the titular middle-aged character's head, as he describes his upbringing deep in the Maine woods. Raised by his widowed WWII vet father in a cozy wood cabin built by his WWI vet grandfather, Julius lives a quiet contemplative life dominated by nature and the 3,000+ books that literally line his home. Summer landscaping and mechanical odd jobs in town provide him with what little money he needs, and the lack of human contact in his life seems to suit him fine: "Many men live in these woods who cannot live anywhere else. They live alone and are tuned close to any offense you might give them." The catalyst for the story is the murder of Julius' dog by an unknown hunter. Getting a dog was the idea of Claire, a woman who wandered into his life several years before and left just as easily. The easy companionship of the dog deflected whatever pain he felt at her abandonment, so when the dog is killed, he is doubly alone. This leads to a scene of startling simplicity and power in which the reader suddenly understands that the quiet, remote, seemingly benign Julius has utterly lost it. It's a brilliant meditation on revenge that completely draws the reader into Julius' orbit and has one alternately rooting for and against his tragic quest. Ignore the terrible cover art, this is a book worth savoring.