The Weight of Winter Book Reviews

The Weight of Winter by Cathie Pelletier Book Summary

Winner of the New England Book Award

"Cathie Pelletier generates the sort of excitement that only writers at the very top of their form can provide."—Stephen King
Welcome to Mattagash, Maine, a small, quirky town where everyone's personal lives are as entwined as their family trees. On the day of the first snowfall, the residents brace themselves for the long winter ahead. Mere survival will be hard; dealing with each other is another story.

As winter settles in, various Mattagashians careen from conundrum to conundrum, trying to save dying small businesses, caring for crabby loved ones, and cruising through town, stirring up gossip any way they can get it. Through it all, 107-year old Mathilda Fennelson reflects on her life as the town's oldest resident, born the year Mattagash was founded. Through her dreams and memories, she reveals the scrappy, strange, and earnest pioneer history of these people weighed down by their own existence.

At once funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, The Weight of Winter is a perfect for fans of Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout), The Language of Flowers (Vanessa Diffenbaugh), and The Good House (Ann Leary) who will fall in love with Mattagash and its people.

More from Mattagash, Maine:

The Funeral Makers (Book 1): Mattagash, Maine: a quiet town rocked by scandal, seduction, mayhem, blackmail, and the only recorded case of beriberi on the entire North American continent!

Wedding on the Banks (Book 2): Amy Joy Lawler just announced her engagement—to an outsider!

The Weight of Winter (Book 3)

The One-Way Bridge (Book 4): Return to Mattagash—the anything but tranquil town where a mysterious dead body has just been found in the woods.
What readers are saying about The Weight of Winter
"While wildly funny at time, The Weight of Winter is a much darker and even more compelling novel than was the first book in the series."

"Wonderfully written with humor, yet extremely hard-hitting."

"This was one of those books that I looked forward to falling back into each time I picked it up, and each time, it felt like going home."
What reviewers are saying about The Weight of Winter
"Pelletier's ear for dialogue is exceptional, and her characters' interior monologues, what they think but don't say, are subversive, humorous and heartbreaking."—Publishers Weekly

"Frequently funny and always poignant, it is a chronicle of past and present times, detailing lost dreams, found meaning, and echoing the sins of generations."—Library Journal
What people are saying about Cathie Pelletier
 "Nobody walks the knife-edge of hilarity and heartbreak more confidently than Cathie Pelletier."— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls

"It is Pelletier's gift to be able to coax the drama from stony ground without artifice or sentimentality."—Boston Globe

"An ambitious, fearless novelist."—The Washington Post

"Cathie does a wonderful job of capturing [her characters'] moods and loves and losses, and yearnings…Her writing is lovely and so descriptive"— Annie Philbrick, Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT

"Sharp stuff...Her sentences are powerful and unique as snowflakes."—New York Times

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The Weight of Winter (Cathie Pelletier) Book Reviews 2024

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