Midwinter Break: A Novel - Hardcover

Bernard MacLaverty lives in Glasgow, Scotland. His books include Lamb, Cal, and Grace Notes, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award.

“Sure-handed and captivating. . . . Contemplating the mysteries that lie at the heart of every marriage, Stella thinks, 'Nobody could peer into a relationship―even for a day or two―and come away with the truth.' It's a measure of MacLaverty's achievement here that he has done exactly that.”
- Washington Post

“Beautifully observed and emotionally resonant, this is a novel to linger over.”
- People, Pick of the Week

“Rich and precisely written...In this finely detailed rendering of a couple’s virtues and foibles, there are numerous outstanding, jewel-like scenes...[T]his is a satisfying, thoroughly enjoyable, and even at times tongue-clucking read.”
- Booklist

“A quietly powerful elegy that chides two finely-wrought characters for not being capable of defining what they value most in life...exquisite.”
- Publishers Weekly, starred review

“[MacLaverty] deploy[s] a masterful palette of details and allusions...A closely observed, deeply sympathetic rendering of a relationship and the fissures that threaten to wreck it.”
- Kirkus, starred review

“Midwinter Break is a work of extraordinary emotional precision and sympathy, about coming to terms―to an honest reckoning―with love and the loss of love, with memory and pain. Full of scenes that are rendered with exquisite accuracy and care, allowing the most detailed physical descriptions to be placed against the possibility of a rich spiritual life, this is a novel of high ambition by an artist at the height of his powers.”
- Colm Tóibín, author of The Master and Brooklyn

“MacLaverty is a sweetly astute writer, a master of fine detail, compassing the quotidian, the intimate, and the sacred. Midwinter Break shows us how ordinary and immense love can be.”
- Anne Enright, author of The Green Road

“MacLaverty’s prose is deceptively simple and rewardingly straightforward and efficient. But what he writes about in this much anticipated novel―the resilience and stress lines of human love experienced over much time―is anything but simple and straightforward. It’s the stuff of life.”
- Richard Ford, author of The Sportswriter and Independence Day