Winslow in Love

Richard Winslow is in a rut. His wife is leaving him, he drinks too much, his once-acclaimed poetry has sunken into obscurity, and he hasn’t written anything worth reading for eighteen months. In truth, he hasn’t even tried. The offer of a visiting professorship at a small college in Montana hardly seems like the best way to renew his artistic glory, but with his options and his bank account rapidly dwindling, Winslow makes the move. Once there, he rediscovers the forgotten pleasures of fly-fishing and meets a girl in worse shape than he is.

Erica is a painfully thin student with a dragon tattooed on her neck. She is also sharp, confrontational, and fiercely intelligent. Their relationship, formed over paper cups of Johnnie Walker in Winslow’s office, escalates when they impulsively take off on a road trip in Winslow’s prized possession, a classic Lincoln Town Car. Traveling through Utah and Arizona, they forge a bond neither anticipated. Winslow, haunted by thoughts of death, begins to embrace the promise of love and life.

From stunning descriptions of fly-fishing in cold Montana streams to pitch-perfect renditions of intimate conversations, Winslow in Love is a work of extraordinary beauty. Canty has long been recognized as a writer of finely nuanced prose who sees our time with breathtaking clarity. Of his last novel, Newsweek wrote: “Canty’s forte is to examine human relationships with the precision of Sue Miller or Louise Erdrich within the context of a fast-moving narrative. Once he’s got you in his thrall, you’re as helpless as his lovers in the hands of fate.”

It would be hard to imagine two more unlikely people to end up being in love with each other than Winslow and Erika, but they are, indeed, in some kind of love in Kevin Canty's Winslow in Love. Winslow is a poet whose life isn't working: his wife, June Leaf, is floating away from him; he hasn't written anything worthwhile for more than a year; he drinks and smokes too much; is fat and out of shape; depressed, morose--basically, a mess. Then, like a deus ex machina, deliverance of a sort appears. Winslow is offered a position teaching creative writing for a semester at a Montana University. (Canty teaches creative writing at the University of Montana.) Winslow is broke, stuck, and doesn't have a better idea, so he accepts the offer.

He and June drive to Montana together, but she leaves almost immediately, never to be heard from again. Winslow meets his students, all poet wannabes, and zeroes in on a pin-thin, tattooed girl half his age named Erika. She is bright, confrontational, and damaged. She drops into his office for Johnny Walker in a paper cup and Winslow quickly realizes that she is at least as troubled as he is. One of the other faculty members tells him that they are all worried about her: she is clearly starving herself to death and an alcoholic in the bargain. A perfect companion for Winslow in his current dark night of the soul.

In the hands of some novelists this would be just another dysfunctional relationship based on booze. Kevin Canty makes it gut-wrenchingly real, like the best of the blues, which Winslow loves and Erika can't stand. During a semester break, they take off in Winslow's Lincoln Town Car, the last relic of a past life and go south. Canty is a master at showing us the landscape, exterior and interior. Whether he is rhapsodizing about fly fishing--and these are the best lines about that since A River Runs Through It--or describing a hangover, a regret, a lost opportunity, he brings the moment to life: its beauty, ridiculousness, and poignancy. --Valerie Ryan