Kate Whiting says Patrick Gale’s deeply touching love story is like no other
Notes From An Exhibition author Patrick Gale’s first historical novel opens rather unnervingly with his protagonist Harry Cane being strapped into a bath.
He is in a Canadian asylum, being treated for mental illness, and his story only starts to emerge when he is moved to a progressive, therapeutic community, where the kindly psychiatrist Gideon encourages him to talk through the trauma he’s suffered.
Harry is a privileged orphan from Edwardian London with a brother called Jack and a wife and daughter, who was forced to flee the country by his brother-in-law, following rumours of his intimate liaisons with another man. Gentle-man Harry joins the would-be farmers who are taming the newly-colonised Canadian prairies and meets Paul, the love of his life.
Throughout the book, we return to Harry in the community, until we finally learn the dreadful truth of how he came to be there.
Epic in scale and subject, Gale — who gained an English degree from New College, Oxford, in 1983 — effortlessly evokes the grand wild landscapes and Harry’s inner turmoil.
It is all the more compelling because it’s based on the true story of Gale’s great-grandfather.
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale is published in hardback by Tinder Press, priced £16.99 (ebook £6.49)
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