The Winter in Anna: A Novel
by Reed Karaim
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Fiction. Literature. Romance. When Eric drops out of college and lucks into a job with a smalltown newspaper, he meets Anna, an older woman with a story that will both haunt and inspire him for the rest of his life. Set in a remote North Dakota community in the last days before the Internet, the story unfolds around a romance that almost was and a meditation on what constitutes a life well-lived. Narrated by Eric as he looks back on their days together, he struggles to reconcile his memories show more with what he has since learned about Anna. The Winter in Anna is filled with moments of tenderness, even as it slowly reveals an unbearable tragedy at the heart of a quietly defiant life. show lessTags
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tangledthread similar story line: young journalism major takes on an outsized task. Upper midwest setting. Sympathetic characters with heavy doses of dysfunction.
Member Reviews
This is a beautiful little book that is a both a coming of age story and a meditation on loss. The story begins with Anna's suicide, years after the rest of the narrative takes place. The story is told by a mature Eric Valery as he reflects upon her death, and her life.
Eric (Rick) Valery drops out of college one semester short of graduation to become a local sports writer for a small town weekly newspaper in Shannon, North Dakota, on the edge of the badlands. Within weeks, he is promoted to editor. Anna also works on the newspaper: a single mother of two preteens, young but not so young as Rick, and a woman full of hesitancy. Anna and Eric quickly become friends as they work together on the final assembly of the paper on Thursday show more nights. He teaches her how to develop photos for the paper and they often function as a reporting team on local events in this time before the digital age.
Through the narrative, Eric reveals tidbits of Anna's past as he learned them during his tenure at the Shannon Sentinel. He also experiences the loss of his father during that year.
The story is populated with an interesting cast of small town locals. Their characters fill out and blossom as Eric matures in his first job and gains a greater understanding of life's complexities. The North Dakota landscape and seasons are beautifully described and are integral to the story.
The writing often prose and beautifully written. I give it 4 stars. show less
Eric (Rick) Valery drops out of college one semester short of graduation to become a local sports writer for a small town weekly newspaper in Shannon, North Dakota, on the edge of the badlands. Within weeks, he is promoted to editor. Anna also works on the newspaper: a single mother of two preteens, young but not so young as Rick, and a woman full of hesitancy. Anna and Eric quickly become friends as they work together on the final assembly of the paper on Thursday show more nights. He teaches her how to develop photos for the paper and they often function as a reporting team on local events in this time before the digital age.
Through the narrative, Eric reveals tidbits of Anna's past as he learned them during his tenure at the Shannon Sentinel. He also experiences the loss of his father during that year.
The story is populated with an interesting cast of small town locals. Their characters fill out and blossom as Eric matures in his first job and gains a greater understanding of life's complexities. The North Dakota landscape and seasons are beautifully described and are integral to the story.
The writing often prose and beautifully written. I give it 4 stars. show less
4.5 stars
We know from the opening paragraph that things don't end well for Anna. What follows is a quiet contemplative trip down memory lane for Eric, who worked at a small town newspaper with Anna many years ago.
Anna's story is slowly revealed through Eric's musings. There's a tragedy in her past, a devastating one that forever changes her, and helps to explain what drove her to do what she did. Her burden was great and she chose Eric as the one person in the world she shared her story with.
Eric was 20 years old at the time, and Anna 10 years older. With a maturity that comes with time and age, Eric now sees Anna with a new understanding of her life and just what her friendship meant.
The prose is beautiful with sentences and show more paragraphs that resonated with me. The story is a sad one but so beautiful I'm glad I read it. I finished it a couple of days ago and I still find myself thinking about it. There are so many Annas in the world, with souls that are battered and broken. We don't know their stories but we would do well to be kind and treat people with care. show less
We know from the opening paragraph that things don't end well for Anna. What follows is a quiet contemplative trip down memory lane for Eric, who worked at a small town newspaper with Anna many years ago.
Anna's story is slowly revealed through Eric's musings. There's a tragedy in her past, a devastating one that forever changes her, and helps to explain what drove her to do what she did. Her burden was great and she chose Eric as the one person in the world she shared her story with.
Eric was 20 years old at the time, and Anna 10 years older. With a maturity that comes with time and age, Eric now sees Anna with a new understanding of her life and just what her friendship meant.
The prose is beautiful with sentences and show more paragraphs that resonated with me. The story is a sad one but so beautiful I'm glad I read it. I finished it a couple of days ago and I still find myself thinking about it. There are so many Annas in the world, with souls that are battered and broken. We don't know their stories but we would do well to be kind and treat people with care. show less
We are introduced to Anna on the day of her death. A painful, lonely suicide. In the remainder of the novel we learn more about Anna through the eyes of the narrator, a long lost friend. He tells us of his year spent in a tiny town as the editor of the local weekly paper with Anna as the photographer. Through his stories, and the few Anna shares with him of her past, we are able to get to know Anna a little more and get a better understanding as to why she would take her own life. Granted, she didn’t leave a note, but one isn’t needed. You know what internal demons she faced and what event truly broke her heart in pieces. A heartbreak one never fully recovers from.
I think this novel is beautifully written. The words simply flow off show more the pages at times. Even when occasionally the subject matter is dark, it doesn’t have that dark feel. There are a couple slow parts in the book (which is why it is a 4 rather than a 5), however, because you are continually becoming more and more attached to the main characters, it’s easy to get through the slower parts. You still want to keep reading until you know why Anna would want to take her own life, leaving her older children behind. It was unthinkable to me, until it wasn’t.
Thank you to Net Galley and W W Norton & Company for an advanced copy of this novel. show less
I think this novel is beautifully written. The words simply flow off show more the pages at times. Even when occasionally the subject matter is dark, it doesn’t have that dark feel. There are a couple slow parts in the book (which is why it is a 4 rather than a 5), however, because you are continually becoming more and more attached to the main characters, it’s easy to get through the slower parts. You still want to keep reading until you know why Anna would want to take her own life, leaving her older children behind. It was unthinkable to me, until it wasn’t.
Thank you to Net Galley and W W Norton & Company for an advanced copy of this novel. show less
Set in bleak North Dakota, The Winter in Anna is a character-driven tale about a callow college dropout who gets a job at a small town newspaper and befriends a coworker, a woman whose dreadful secrets eventually lead to tragedy. I liked the descriptions and the interactions between the characters, and I found it to be a quick read, but it is not essential by any means.
The Winter in Anna
By Reed Karaim
Narrated By Will Damron
Published 2017 by Dreamscape Media, LLC
7 hours and 23 minutes
I received a free audio copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I’m a big fan of literary fiction—when it’s well done—but The Winter in Anna was not what I consider to be well done. Ricky, the narrator of this story, was not a particularly interesting or complex character. The majority of the story consists of Ricky telling the story of Anna, his co-worker and friend who committed suicide. I definitely think Anna was more complex and interesting but I would have liked to learn more about Anna from a different perspective than Ricky. In addition, the writing wasn’t especially show more noteworthy. It felt like there was a lot of filler material to make the story longer but that didn’t really add to the story or the understanding of the characters. I was frequently bored with the story and had no emotional involvement with the characters.
I can’t say that I recommend this book but it wasn’t terrible either. The story had potential and the writing was average. The narrator, Will Damron, has the perfect voice and style for literary fiction. There were times in this particular book where I felt his narration was overly dramatic but I think that may have had more to do with my lack of connection to the story than with his performance. I’ve added him to my list of narrators to watch for. show less
By Reed Karaim
Narrated By Will Damron
Published 2017 by Dreamscape Media, LLC
7 hours and 23 minutes
I received a free audio copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I’m a big fan of literary fiction—when it’s well done—but The Winter in Anna was not what I consider to be well done. Ricky, the narrator of this story, was not a particularly interesting or complex character. The majority of the story consists of Ricky telling the story of Anna, his co-worker and friend who committed suicide. I definitely think Anna was more complex and interesting but I would have liked to learn more about Anna from a different perspective than Ricky. In addition, the writing wasn’t especially show more noteworthy. It felt like there was a lot of filler material to make the story longer but that didn’t really add to the story or the understanding of the characters. I was frequently bored with the story and had no emotional involvement with the characters.
I can’t say that I recommend this book but it wasn’t terrible either. The story had potential and the writing was average. The narrator, Will Damron, has the perfect voice and style for literary fiction. There were times in this particular book where I felt his narration was overly dramatic but I think that may have had more to do with my lack of connection to the story than with his performance. I’ve added him to my list of narrators to watch for. show less
SET IN NORTH DAKOTA. A YOUNG MAN IS APPOINTED EDITOR OF THE LOCAL SMALL TOWN NEWSPAPER.
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2017-01
- Important places
- Shannon, North Dakota, USA
- Dedication
- This is for Lisa.
- First words
- THERE ARE LIVES THAT END BADLY.
- Quotations
- "It was quiet..." Anna said again, and that was the start. Over many nights, in fragments, she told me her story. The effect was like turning something broken over in your hand and trying to imagine it whole.
He worked on an oil rig. He was from somewhere else. He had a shock of blond hair like a flare of sun and a face that was all perfect angles smudged with the greasy war paint of his adventure.
The Great Plains make dreamers the way New York makes hustlers
It never occurred to her to worry about being alone in the country. This was her home and it was empty but for the brilliant stars and the shadows of the hills and the moon already distant on the far side of the sky.
I went back to the university and missed most of the worst, but college life, which already echoed with too much of my young past, now felt as insignificant as a children's play put on in the basement on a slow winter day.
Now, with my father's illness, what had been the best thing about going to school, the sense of stealing time from responsibility, was barren, attended by a constant whisper of shame.
She might have been discussing some half-forgotten annoyance that had happened in the distant past, perhaps another life completely.
The truth is, we were a fallback couple pretending to each other we were something more, spending time with our arms draped around each other at parties while measuring other possibilities out of the corners of our eyes.
I was aware of the incongruity of my feelings, and that only made it worse, as if I had lost the ability to hold the world in its correct form, had woken up to find some essential part of myself missing.
The act of not acting consumed the totality of my being every minute of each day.
It was only at unexpected moments, when my mind had wandered too far into some unmarked cul de sac, that I found myself seeing her short, tousled blond hair and wide, crooked smile that still did something to me, slightly blu... (show all)rred my vision. But it wasn't that often and most of the time I felt pretty good.
Really, it was entirely possible I felt fine.
The snow stopped, the sun came out, the sky and earth were the same startling unblemished white, as if God had created the universe ten seconds ago
Like most every bad thing in life, it was lousy for everybody else, but good for the newspaper business.
On Thursday, when we met in the back room to lay out the pages, the building echoed as if we had been forgotten, left behind after the bombs fell.
It was one of those moments when it's just you and someone else and the rest of the world has vanished, was quite possibly never there to begin with.
The nights were where a sense of purposelessness sometimes stole back into my head like an unpleasant friend settling into your favorite chair.
Anna and her kids walked down the crowded street holding hands, slowing turning into a set of cutout black paper dolls connected at the wrists.
This street was where I had grown up and it was all strange: every window, every door, every glint of light on every mailbox was familiar and so alien I felt I had tumbled into a badly made movie set.
We were young. I remember, and I feel our youth like an ancient memory of lightness in the bones.
The only part of the wisdom that supposedly comes with age that I've found has any real value is learning to recognize other people's pain.
My father had been dead for a week but I was already numb to the look of condolence that greets you when you see people the first time, the combination of sympathy and awkward uncertainty, the wish they weren't facing that mo... (show all)ment, the sense of inadequacy that left them feeling somewhat ashamed and hurried to get it over. Beneath all that was something else, a buried but inescapable sense of distance that came from the idea that they were still safely on the other side of a chasm. They stood in the land of the living, taking refuge in the idea they had permanent residence.
A furtive restlessness lived beneath the torpor of the long, hot days, as if people could feel the season passing too fast.
She stood by sliding her back up against the wall. It was an impressive sight, like watching a mountain rise out of the earth.
I drifted through the summer with a sense of being half awake, sliding in and out of the lassitude that hangs on the edge of a dream during a restless night.
North Dakota's fields all seemed to run right off the edge of the earth.
She laughed the way you laugh when something is very much not funny.
"People aren't perfect. But some are worse."
The old man as a little too thin and his hair had started to recede in a way that gave him the aspect of a slightly deranged, crested bird.
"You need to care, Eric. And you need to find something to do, something that takes you from this day to the next one. That's what people do. That's how they manage."
But when I look in on my daughter, I know I am standing in front of the one part of creation whose loss, I think, would leave me unable to go on.
Helplessness is the essence of unconditional love; you know you would do anything, surrender anything, betray anything.
My daughter is a dark star—space and time bend around her until it becomes impossible to see clearly.
"Say thank you," Anna would gently prod her daughter with a look of quiet affection, and this is something I want you to understand: The scenes that happen-off camera in Anna's story are overwhelmingly scenes of love. She was... (show all) a mother, first of all, and her children were the largely unseen center of each day. I think about that now, and I think about how hard it must have been. A single mother. Not much money, never enough, really. A life like millions of others in America, equally off-camera.
Football season starts and I spend part of each Friday driving past combines crisscrossing ripened fields, heading toward a rectangle of dying grass at the edge of another small town where teenage boys in faded jerseys and ba... (show all)ttered helmets pummel themselves black and blue under lights that lend the scene the stark, judgmental quality of crime scene photos.
the autumn in North Dakota is the best of seasons: The afternoons swell with diffused light, the trees are kaleidoscopes, the sky cracks gently along the edge, and all the colors spill into early evening. It's a time when the... (show all) unexpected perfection of a particular day can stop you in midstride, when your thoughts slow down to take on a renewed clarity and you make a series of small resolutions to do better from here on out as you turn up your collar against the approaching winter.
Small towns come with a hardwired rumor circuit that trips in and operates at light speed
The street was quiet, damp leaves scattered like smears of paint on the sidewalk.
The wedding came up in this twilight like an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
The closest friend, I learned those last few weeks, is someone you share the unsaid things with.
Years later I look back on that day and find it framed by the recent memory of the newspaper chain I worked for being sold off in pieces like the estate of some deceased dowager, several of the papers shuttered, others surviv... (show all)ing in ghostly half-lives as appendages to websites that serve as glorified billboards. The idea that the past promises us a certain future is always an illusion, of course, but to see the substance of our world slipping out of existence would have been unimaginable to Anna and me then, and so it strikes me this story is, in some lesser part, also a record of a time when words were physical things, immutable once they were stamped into paper, and a small newspaper could believe it mattered, was providing a record for the community it served—flawed, inadequate, but as permanent in its own way as parchment inked by monks bent over their copy boards a thousand years earlier.
I had seen her like this out of the corner of my eye for months, a quiet reassurance tucked into nearly every day. Anna.
We slid between stars above and below, and the feeling was like beginning a long, slow, effortless descent through the heavens.
I saw how Anna had chosen each day to go on, and not just to go on, but to live, with all that asks of us, and it seemed to me the bravest thing I had ever seen.
Is there anything worse, I wondered, than a half-told tale, and do we ever get more than that? - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)It floats above your open palm in the blue sky, like our young hearts, aloft.
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