Just how difficult it would get could be forecast by the smoothness of the ice. The lake had frozen in one night, which meant that a harsh winter was due. When they came up, everyone knew that winter had begun, and that a long time would pass before the spring made the lake light yellow with melting streams that fled from newly breathing fields. The winds ripped off tiles, broke branches, and toppled unwired chimneys. These winds had been born and raised in the arctic, and had learned their manners on the way down, in Montreal-or so it was said, since the people of Lake of the Coheeries hadn’t much respect for the manners or mores of Montreal. In the second week of December at the latest, the inhabitants of Lake of the Coheeries Town sat by their fires after dinner and stared into the darkness around their rafters as Canadian winds rode in hordes and attacked their settlement from the north. In honor of the first day of the season (should it ever come), we present our favorite passages from this singular wintertime book.Īnd sometime not too deep in winter, each year, the Lake of the Coheeries would surprise everyone by freezing over during the night. Helprin, who grew up in the Hudson Valley, does his title justice with odd and perfect descriptions of an icebound New York that may soon be the stuff of pure fantasy. Mark Helprin’s strange fabulist epic, Winter’s Tale, is a unique and unexpected book, set in a world that’s almost but not quite our own.
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