Andrae A. - Mind of winter : a novel

Leave-the-lights-on-tonight frightening, with a quiet edge of horror that is much more effective than gore.

NPR

A nightmare-inducing domestic mystery.... Kasischkes background as a poet is clear in her use of language, particularly the repetition of certain phrases and images. The suspense and horror in Mind of Winter is largely created by these rhythms, and by her choices of what to leave out as much as to state.... Kasischke knows that what lurks hidden in the shadows is scarier than any monster we can see. She also knows that, scared as we may be, we cant resist a peek.

Boston Globe

A terrifying brew of family drama and horror.... The awesome ending doesnt disappoint.

Entertainment Weekly

Shocking.

Vogue.com

Impossible to put down.

BookPage

It is not enough to say that Kasischkes language is poetic, a word that has come to mean pretty. Rather, her writing does what good poetry doesit shows us an alternate world and lulls us into living in it.... [T]he language catapults us into another plane of existence, one of faade and reflection.

New York Times Book Review

An unknown horror hovers just out of reach in this gripping psychological thriller.... Kasischke skillfully mixes an insightful look at a damaged woman with a twisty plot that builds to a shocking ending.

Publishers Weekly

A book that will haunt you for days and long, long nights after reading.

Booklist (starred review)

Thought-provoking and chilling, Mind of Winter will have you looking over your shoulder as you tear through the pages to the shocking and heartbreaking conclusion. It will leave you questioning not only what is real but also what it means to be a good mother.

Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling
author of Reconstructing Amelia

A genuinely disturbing tale, each layer perfectly crafted, stacked together like a set of Russian nesting dolls, the tiniest one at the center the horrific secret that everything else depends upon. Its rare and wonderful to find a book like Mind of Winter that is both a masterwork of evocative prose and a bone-chilling page-turner.

Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling
author of The Winter People

Mind of Winter is a tightly coiled story of suffocating love and undeniable horror. Its grip is remarkably chilling, masterfully poetic, and psychologically unrelenting.

Ivy Pochoda, author of Visitation Street

If I could stand on a mountaintop and shout over the land, I would do it now: This book is magnificent! Its a gripping psychological thriller, at once both charmingly domestic and flat-out terrifying. Laura Kasischke writes so well that she leaves me inspired and very, very jealous.

Elin Hilderbrand, author of Beautiful Day

For Bill

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place...

Wallace Stevens, from The Snow Man

SHE WOKE UP late that morning, and knew:

Something had followed them home from Russia.

This scrappy bit of information had been offered up to Holly in a dream, she supposed, a glimpse into a truth shed carried with her forhow long?

Thirteen years?

Thirteen years!

For thirteen years shed known this, and not knownor so it seemed to her in her half-awake state on Christmas morning. She rose from bed and went down the hallway to her daughters bedroom, anxious to see that she was there, still asleep, perfectly safe.

Yes, there she was, Tatiana, one pale arm thrown over a pale coverlet. Dark hair spilled over a pillow. She was so still she could have been a painting. So peaceful she could have been

But she wasnt. She was fine. Holly felt reassured and went back to the bedroom, slipped into bed beside her husband againbut as soon as she did, she thought it once more:

It had followed them home!

This was something Holly had known, apparently, in her heart, or in her subconscious, or wherever it was inside her where bits of information like this hid themselves for years, until something made her aware of what shed forgotten, or repressed, or

Or was it something shed willfully overlooked? Now she saw it:

Something had followed them home from Russia!

But what?

And then Holly thought, I must write this down before it slips away. It was that feeling she used to have when she was youngerthe almost panicked desire to write about something shed half glimpsed, to get it on the page before it dashed away again. Sometimes it had felt nearly nauseating, that desire to yank it out of herself and put it into written words before it hid away behind some organ deep inside hersome maroonish, liverish, gillish organ shed have to pry behind, as if fingering it out of a turkey carcass, ever to get at it again. Thats what writing a poem used to feel like to Holly, and why shed quit writing poems.

My God, though, this thought was like a poema secret, a truth, just out of reach. Holly would need time to pluck this out and examine it in the light, but it was in her, whether shed known it or not until now. Like a poem that wanted to be written. A truth insisting on recognition.

Something had followed them home from Russia!

It was the explanation for so many things!

The cat, crawling off. Her back legs, her tail.

And her husband. The bump on the back of his hand, like a tiny third fista homunculuss!growing. Theyd said it was benign, but how could such a thing be benign? Theyd said to ignore it, but how? Something was bearing fruit inside her husband, or trying to claw its way out. How were they to ignore it?

(Although, to be fair to Dr. Fujimura, they had learned to ignore it, and it had eventually stopped growing, just as shed said it would.)

And Aunt Rose. How her language had changed. How shed begun to speak in a foreign language. How Hollyd had to stop taking her calls because she couldnt stand it anymore, and how angry her cousins had been, saying She loved to talk to you. You were her favorite. You abandoned her while she was dying.

And then the hens. Ganging up on the other one, on the hen shed so stupidly, so cavalierly, named Sally. Six weeks, and then

Dont think about Sally. Never think of that hen and her horrible name again.

And the water stain over the dining room table in the shape of a shadowy facealthough they could never find anywhere that water would have seeped through their skintight, warranty-guaranteed roof. The roof company men had stood around in their filthy boots and stared up at it, refusing to take any blame.

Also, without explanation, the wallpaper had curled away in the bathroom. Just that one edge. You could never do anything to keep it in place. Theyd tried every adhesive on the market, but the daisy wallpaper would stick fast for exactly three days and nights before it peeled away again.

Holly needed to write down these things, this evidence! The cat, Aunt Rose, the bump on her husbands hand, the hens, the water stain, the wallpaperalong with the clue provided to her by her dream:

Something had followed them home from Russia.

How long had it been since shed woken up needing to write? God, how Holly used to