The Heart in Winter with Kevin Barry
Wed 30 Apr 2025
7:00pm at Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, 14-15 John St, Bath, BA1 2JL
All tickets include 15% off any books purchased on the night, a glass of wine or soft drink, author talk, Q&A and signing.
Other ways to book:
Email books@mrbsemporium.com, call 01225 331155 or pop into the shop at 14-15 John Street, Bath. BA1 2JL.
We are incredibly excited to welcome Kevin Barry back to Mr B’s to discuss his latest novel, The Heart in Winter, for its paperback release.
Already a phenomenal Team B favourite, The Heart in Winter was crowned Ed’s book of the year in 2024, declaring it his “favourite read in years.”
The Heart in Winter is a wild, romantic ride into the Old West of 1870s Butte, Montana, as Tom and Polly embark on a thunderbolt love affair and make a run for it on a stolen horse, unaware of the carnage that is hot on their heels. Savagely funny and beautifully crafted, this is the kind of book that will leave you wondering how you’ll ever read any other writer’s work again.
Kevin Barry is the multi award-winning author of four novels and three short story collections, including Beatlebone, City of Bohane, That Old Country Music, and the Booker Prize longlisted Night Boat to Tangier. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter, and he lives in County Sligo, Ireland.
About the book:
What if we ride out tonight? What if we ride out and never once look back?
October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains.
The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast .
‘Holy damn, it’s good.’ DAVID MITCHELL
‘An absolute belter of a book’ ANNE ENRIGHT
‘A great big rollicking ballad of a novel. A love story, and a slice of history, in a language as close to song as literature will ever get’ COLUM McCANN
PICKED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, OBSERVER, IRISH TIMES, INDEPENDENT, IRISH INDEPENDENT, IRISH EXAMINER, TLS, SCOTSMAN, THE TIMES AND ECONOMIST