[.ca] Winter Rose (ISBN 0441004385)

Amazon.com Review:
Winter Rose begins as the seemingly simple story of Rois and Laurel Melior and their understandable fascination with young Corbet Lynn, returned to rebuild his abandoned ancestral home, Lynn Hall. Laurel is drawn to Corbet's beauty, Rois to the mystery of his past. But the past holds more than one mystery, and as Rois fights her way into the wood around Lynn Hall, seeking answers for herself, Laurel, and Corbet, she risks losing everything, for all of them, forever. Traces of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, of Tam Lin, and of a dozen other legends and tales color Rois's story. Patricia McKillip's consummate mastery of language means that every word counts in a complex, sweetly painful story of human love and timeless, indifferent power.

Excellent writing, world, and premise:
Winter Rose is typical of Patricia A. McKillip's recent work. It is extremely well written and evokes not only the images of her created worlds, but the textures and scents as well. While, on the surface, this feels like one of a number of similar stories wherein a young girl faces adversity and saves the day while simultaneously growing as a person, there is a deeper (and darker) undercurrent to the prose. McKillip draws upon numerous myths, but twists them together like the briars that she uses as theme. There are hints of Tam Lin, Rip Van Winkle (aka Thomas the Rhymer), and the Mabinogion among others. However, there is a very human element as well. As the characters attempt to (and in many cases, fail to) understand what is going on, the story resonates between the present and the past, between reality and hallucination, and between dreams. Some characters grow, some characters do not. Some of the ones that do not are the very ones that should, and some of the ones that grow grow in saddening ways -- much like life, I suppose. By the end, I was confused as to which events were real and which were dream. I was as uncertain as to which characters felt what as the characters themselves seemed to be. Most unsettling and yet in perfect correspondence with the myths of encountering the Fey. I am certain that this was intentional on McKillip's part. It's an excellent read that I heartilly recommend... Just don't read it in the winter.

A vague, inarticulate tale:
Sometimes McKillip writes the way I would talk if I had marbles in my mouth. This is one of those times.

THIS BOOK WAS HORRIBLE:
Okay I would first like to start by saying that I am an avid reader, who enjoys many types of books (even though i'm only 14). Okay so here's the scoop- this book was terrible. First off, the main character was OBSESSED with the man and it was absolutley confusing to the point of annoying that you didn't know what the heck he was. I was EXTREMELY disapointed because i had just finished reading a VERY good book by this author, In The Forest Of Serre (this i recommend). Also, the plot was so repetitive, i couldn't even finish the darn book! And i'm glad i didn't because i read the ending and it was horrible.

Beautiful prose, engaging story:
A young man returns to his father's ancient and ruined house and begins to rebuild, while rumors swirl through the village of a fifty-year-old curse on the man's family. On a nearby farm, two sisters are captivated by the man's mysterious charm. Summer gives way to winter, icy and terrible, the season of the curse, and the young man must leave his partially rebuilt house. The older sister, the practical and industrious Laurel, pines at her window and wastes away in her bed. The younger sister, and narrator of the story, is the wild and restless Rois. Rois travels from farmhouse to village to hall seeking answers to the questions that torment her. And because she knows of them, Rois also travels to the hidden portals that connect the human world to the realm of faerie. In the end, there is only way to break the dangerous spell which the queen of faerie has cast over all of them. Rois must match the love and courage of a true human woman against the magic of the fairy queen. The language is beautiful, and the story is enchanting. Highly recommended.

A Tale of Love, Family, and Faerie:
Rois Melior is a wild child. A disconnect exists between her and the human world, not only because she walks barefoot or forgets the time while wandering in the woods (forever causing those who love her to worry), but also because she is *aware* of what she does, knows it's not normal, yet she doesn't care. Rois has always been a little strange, a little other, and this suits her fine. Rois's elder sister Laurel is beautiful, sensible, and proper--the epitome of normal, even being engaged to her childhood sweetheart Perrin, a thoroughly respectable farmer. Then one summer Corbet Lynn returns to his ancestral home, a crumbling hall being reclaimed by the woods, bringing with him a family curse and questions of if his father really murdered his grandfather. Rois knows something is different about Corbet and becomes obsessed with discovering why he has come back. McKillip's skill with language is evident on every page. Her ability to create atmosphere, striking characters, and explore the complex nature of family and love in a succinct amount of words is magical. (Spoilers below) Rois falls for Corbet, yet is it Corbet or the mystery of him--that he is as strange and other as she if not more so--that really draws her to him. Rois must watch her sister catch the eye of the only man who has ever intrigued her, knowing disaster approaches for them all. Corbet remains an elusive figure. There are moments when you feel Rois is his desire (he calls to her in dreams, entices her to seek out his secrets), yet he begins a romance with Laurel. We learn Corbet's family is intertwined with the faerie; he has returned to Lynn Hall to escape the Otherworld in the woods to become human. Perhaps it is Rois's very wildness and similarity to Corbet and all he wishes to flee that both attracts and repels him. Laurel's normalcy offers him a better chance of clinging to the human world (or so he believes). Or perhaps Corbet cares for neither girl and uses both for his own ends. Laurel loves her fiancé Perrin yet is powerless against the seduction of faerie. When Corbet disappears in the winter as suddenly as he came in summer, Laurel begins to waste away from a mysterious illness (an illness that claimed her and Rois's mother many years ago). It is up to Rois to bring Corbet back, whether for herself or for Laurel she isn't sure. Rois and Laurel still love each other even as both realize they love the same man. The bonds of sisterhood are never sacrificed and the dynamic of family, love, and magic are portrayed with seriousness, complexity, and sensitivity. McKillip creates vivid images of the Otherworld, a place beautiful, terrifying, and alluring. Her faeries are ageless, powerful, and beyond the constraints of the human world. But for all the Otherworld's timeless beauty, something powerful and wonderful exists in the human world of death and change that can never be found with the faerie. Rois journeys into the heart of the Otherworld, into the parallel woods of an icy queen and where secrets of her own origins lie. She will have to choose whether she will remain a daughter of the wood or finally take her place in the human world. In the end, Rois rescues Corbet, but when she's sees him back in the human world everything is different. Summer has come again. Corbet remembers nothing (or does he?). Rois has changed; she now wears shoes and is mindful of others worrying about her. Laurel's heart is Perrin's once more. We are to rejoice in these changes, that Rois and Corbet are free of the wood, but still a sense of melancholy lingers for what has been lost, even if it what has occurred is necessary. I've seen readers express frustration with "was this a dream or real...did this mean that...did he/she feel...?" I can understand these frustrations well. McKillip doesn't give easy, clear cut answers to the main characters feelings or in distinguishing between Rois's dreams and when she's awake. But Mckillip does give her readers what we need to know. The answer rests in the answer Rois receives to which version of the Lynn curse was true: all of them. Likewise, the multiple interpretations of Rois, Laurel, and Corbet's motives and feelings are all true. All of Rois's dreams were reality, and her reality during winter was a dream. Yes, the ending could have been more resolved. The sap in me would have liked Corbet to fully explain himself and declare his undying love for Rois alone. But if he had done this it wouldn't have been true to his character or the story. I knew he and Rois would get together eventually.