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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 10 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Much lies beneath the frozen river.... Nov 02, 2009
By Linda L. Scott
This novel resonates because it taps into our most passionate and vulnerable human aspects. Like Jonah, we try so desperately to find love. We are seekers, looking to find meaning, an identification that works, so that we too, can feel accepted. And yet the only way in, is to go through the murky depths....and so the story unfolds. It's quite a ride. Full of wit and poignancy. I loved every minute of this book!
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
An Excellent Read! Nov 16, 2009
By Gloria Mills
The River in Winter is a book about a young gay man that literally held this 69 year old grandmother spellbound. I fell in love with Jonah before the end of the second chapter and felt I'd known him forever by the end of the book. At times, I wished I could step right into the story and somehow protect him from harm, he seemed that "real". Dean also has an incredible talent for painting such vivid scenes it puts the reader right there, seeing and sensing it all, right along with the characters. It real, it's raw, and it's one of the best books I've read in some time.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Losing its way... Sep 09, 2010
By T. V. Reichert
This was an extremely frustrating book. I purchased it because it was a Lambda finalist. It started very promisingly - the initial introduction of characters was good, there were interesting characters, the writing is good. But it quickly loses its way, with picayune detail overwhelming the story; it feels like there is very little through line to the book. The book needed a good editor to clean it up. If you live in Minneapolis/St. Paul, you will feel lots of recognition with the excruciating detail of which street Jonah turns down, then which street, then which street, etc. But I don't live there, and I am not going to use the book as some sort of map. It just doesn't really matter.
More problematic is the simple fact that the core character is an empty shell. You get the feeling that lots of stuff happens to him, but his interior life is really missing. So when he does X or Y, it is hard to have much reaction to understand if it is "in character" or "out of character." Who knows? There is a lot going on in the book, but there is no real understanding of Jonah's internalization of the events. After a certain amount of to-and-fro, I just didn't care.
Jonah gets mixed up rather early on with a counselor and a group that is not a good idea, and for much of the book I was waiting to see how this would play out. It is the core of the story arc. In the end, it ended with a whimper, rather than a bang, and it was a huge disappointment that the writer did not resolve this in a better way. I was reading this on a Kindle, and starting around the 55% mark, I started telling myself I would only read 10% more and then quit, but I kept going hoping that this would get resolved and the story could move forward. Instead, it gets "resolved" in the last few pages of the book, with an "epilogue" to clean up loose ends in a short and perfunctory way.
I wanted terribly to like this book. It started with great promise, but by the end it felt like a huge disappointment.
4 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Perfect title for a near-perfect book about never-perfect life Dec 14, 2009
By Constantine P. Copses
Matt Dean's book is just like what I'd imagine a river in winter to be--a nice idea--pristine nature, space, travel--but a colder reality, plenty of searching, the feeling of being lost, and worse, lonely. The thing I loved about this book was the way it doesn't offer easy answers or clear resolution. The river is beautiful, but it's also so painful. We find plenty of moments of connection in Dean's breathtaking and poignant prose, but we also feel the never-endingness of his journey. What's best about this book is the thing that's most real--that none of us ever truly know where we're going. This book helps us admit that, and Jonah keeps us company so, at least, we don't have to go it alone.
4 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Easily the best fiction I've read in years. Nov 16, 2009
By Todd Frech, Producer, Queen's English Productions
This was one of the few page-turners I've read in the past couple of years. The story flowed and pulled me along causing me to gladly stop all of my life's necessities so I could focus on the book.
I became so wrapped up in the characters that I actually miss them now and hope there is a sequel. Easily the best fiction I've read in the past couple of years.
See all 10 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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