A Mind of Winter

A bitter January day on the outskirts of a small Irish university town, and Fox, a reclusive researcher, has just received a phone call. His former girlfriend Clara has brought word that his mentor and love rival Stoyte is gravely ill and, what's more, the dying man has some final things he needs to say. Now Fox must set out through the snow and ice to reckon with the ghosts of the past. Poignant, haunting, and absurdly comic, A Mind of Winter is a tale of lost lives, guilt, punishment, and the cruelties we inflict upon ourselves and others.

Praise for A Mind of Winter

'At once a philosophical feast and an existential comedy, A Mind of Winter calls to mind writers such as Clarice Lispector and Marguerite Duras with its elusive and hallucinatory use of language. Fox’s situation is surreal, but the sense of him we get is vivid and relatable. There is a cinematic quality to Smith’s use of the winter landscape, which serves to augment the vitality of Fox’s struggle.' - Patrick Doherty, writing.ie

‘At just under a hundred pages, A Mind in Winter can be read in a couple of hours, but you may want to take your time with it to relish Smith’s style. Each brief chapter is made up of a single, uninterrupted paragraph that can go on for pages and pages, broken by a command: “Up, Fox, up. Up”.  The prose is unadorned for the most part although occasionally Smith slips in a Banvillean image like “the slate sky was casting its shadow everywhere, and everything was dimming in the subfuscous light.” […] There is a lot of perhaps in the novel. Certainty or the lack of it occupies Fox’s mind, and there is a great deal of ambiguity, both psychological and linguistic. “Should I have committed myself to the future perfect?” Fox asks. In A Mind of Winter, Smith has fashioned a bleakly humorous, philosophical, and inescapably human story.’ - Niall McArdle, Books Ireland

‘Smith does a wonderful job of conveying the half-baked thoughts and grievances of a disaffected intellectual, and the images of winter are especially crisp: ‘Every so often, ten or twelve glides or so, I would slow my pace to hear … the soft carelessness of the snow dropping on the gently shuddering hedgerows.’ - Conor Harrison, Literary Review

‘This work isn't about plot, it's about rumination on a life not well lived, the life Fox had led up to now. He's a bitter old sod,but his bitterness is at least well written bitterness, clothed in some staggeringly beautiful passages. It's a fine piece of writing, full of admirable craftmanship.’ - Anne Cunnigham, Meath Chronicle

Published by Dedalus Books (2023)