My New Book: A Mind of Winter
Nov 12
A MIND OF WINTER will be published by Akashic Books in May, 2012.
Summary: Oscar is a mysterious Englishman who presides over Ellis Park, a sprawling mansion in East Hampton, Long Island. It is 1951; as the jazz bands play and the ever-present houseguests waft into the ballroom, the war seems much farther away than a mere, six years. However, Oscar is tormented by his own questionable, moral wartime dealings—and embroiled in a drama involving late-night meetings with an official, with whom he speaks German. He is also haunted by memories of Christine, his great love who, after the war, sailed to Shanghai; he has no idea of the murky, moral depths into which she has fallen.
One of Oscar’s frequent houseguests, Marilyn, a photographer who spent the war years in England, has moved in to Ellis Park for the summer and is working on a book of her wartime photography. Marilyn reminds Oscar of Christine; he finds refuge late at night sitting beside her in the pristine photographic studio he built in a basement area, deep beneath the sumptuous, brightly lit rooms above. Oscar suspects that Marilyn, married to Simon, is embarked on an affair with the adventurous Barnaby, a swashbuckling character whose far-flung wanderings included a long stint in Shanghai, where Barnaby himself had been involved with Christine.
The narrative unfolds through the three different points of view of Oscar, Christine and Marilyn, in cities on three continents—East Hampton, Shanghai and London. A Mind of Winter is a complex, page-turning, literary psychological thriller, which takes up a rich array of themes: the ways in which we choose our beliefs and build our lives around them; the self-deceptive shadings that undulate within; the moral ambiguities of being an artist; and the ways in which socio-historical circumstances inevitably bite into and shape personal identity and destiny.
Review from Publisher’s Weekly
May 17Publisher’s Weekly has a new review of A Mind of Winter:
Three people whose lives touched during WWII take turns narrating this haunting psychological thriller from Nayman (The Listener): Oscar, an enigmatic art collector, whose past is the book’s central mystery; Christine, Oscar’s great love, who left him after the war and fled to Shanghai, where she became enmeshed in the shadow world of drugs and prostitution; and Marilyn, a photographer with dark memories who struggles to finish a collection of wartime photos. The three have developed their own histories, differing versions of what should be the same story. When they meet again in the U.S. in 1951, they must reconsider their stories and come to terms with a hidden truth that could have changed the course of their lives. Facing this truth can be a painful process, and the suspense grows to an almost unbearable level by the time it’s revealed. Nayman’s training as a clinical psychologist serves her well.
Review from the Jewish Book Council
May 17The Jewish Book Council just published its review of A Mind of Winter:
A disquieting cloak of secrecy, the lack of a secure foundation, and distorted memories cast a pall over much of this novel, as if the opium which figures significantly in a portion of the book infused the entire narrative.
The lives of the three major characters are complex. All are World War Il survivors: Marilyn from the London blitz, Oscar and Christine from the Nazi depravity in war-torn Europe. The important supporting characters, Barnaby, Simon, and Walter, are well developed and interesting in their own right. The author succeeds in exposing the characters’ inner beliefs and emotional traumas; we discover how their perceptions of events and memories direct the course of their lives.
The overabundant, but beautifully expressed descriptions convey the author’s skill with language and heighten the reader’s curiosity to know the truth: who really is Oscar? Is it possible to know, without a doubt, when an act is one of self-preservation or of deliberate collaboration? What was real and what imagined?
The functional selectivity of memory is enduring and subtly powerful, but not necessarily accurate or obvious. Yet this selectivity determines and defines the lives of the people at the core of this complex novel. What we bring to the text determines what we take from it, as the reader’s own perspectives and preconceptions become an unwritten part of the narrative.
Recording of my book launch
May 17Over at Soundcloud you can find a recording of my book launch event, an evening of poetry, prose, music, and conversation sparked by the publication of my novel A Mind of Winter.
Purchasing A MIND OF WINTER
May 17
Buy A Mind of Winter at these online retailers:
News: Awake in the Dark Optioned
Nov 12The first two stories of AWAKE IN THE DARK have been optioned by Cicala Filmworks (New York), in association with Egoli Tossell (Berlin), to be made into a movie. More information to come.
