Review: Love begins in winter

Sweet, Romantic, great gift book

Simon Van Booy was born in London and grew up in rural Wales and Oxford. After playing football in Kentucky, he lived in Paris and Athens. In 2002 he was awarded an MFA and won the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize. His journalism has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and the New York Post. Van Booy is the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love, now translated into several languages. He lives in New York City, where he teaches part-time at the School of Visual Arts and at Long Island University. He is also involved in the Rutgers Early College Humanities Program (REaCH) for young adults living in underserved communities. (Source: his website)

I found this book while browsing for books at my local bookstore last week. While having coffee with my son, we both picked up a few books are started reading a few pages before making our final selections. I read the first story in Love Begins in Winter and knew I wanted to finish this book.
It’s a collection of five stories about relationships and is perfect book to put in a guest room.

BWAV rating of this book: 4 stars

Type: Short Stories, 256 pages, Trade paperback

Synopsis:On the verge of giving up—anchored to dreams that never came true and to people who have long since disappeared from their lives—Van Booy's characters walk the streets of these stark and beautiful stories until chance meetings with strangers force them to face responsibility for lives they thought had continued on without them.

Reviews:
Simon Van Booy knows a great deal about the complex longings of the human heart, and he articulates those truths in his stories with pitch-perfect elegance. Love Begins in Winter is a splendid collection, and Van Booy is now a writer on my must-always-read list. – Robert Olen Bulter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
“In the five impressionistic stories in Van Booy’s latest collection, following The Secret Lives of People in Love (2007), the author continues to develop his highly original style…More about what is felt than what happens, Van Booy’s stories pay beautiful homage to human connection.” — Booklist