The Winter Gardeners

By Dennis Denisoff

In the town of Lake Wachannabee, Ontario, lies the Winter Garden, home to matron Giggy Andrewes and her brood: her strung-out nephew Jem Waferly, his friend Cora, Chappy the whippet, two peacocks, and Jem's lover Rob, who lies convalescing after having had most of his flesh stripped away.

A mystery? Well, yes, it would be if only the characters weren't so easily distracted by the noir-ishly handsome chief inspector, the seductive female veterinarian and the dashing anthropology professor studying the Winter Garden's gorge.

The Winter Gardeners spend a summer of sultry afternoons nursing Rob, languidly drinking cocktails and trying to picture Nude Descending Staircase in their supposedly Cubist garden. Soon, however, they find themselves in a court room, where their family's values are on trial in a case reminiscent of that of Oscar Wilde.

'Throught the novel, Denisoff uses imagerylike a daredevil trapeze artist … The Winter Gardeners is a surreal soap opera, a sexual satire, an Impressionist painting. And it should not be missed.'

– Quill and Quire, starred review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Oct 16, 2003
• ISBN: 9781770562370

Dennis Denisoff

Dennis Denisoff is the author of the novel Dog Years, a book of poetry, Tender Agencies, and two scholarly studies, Aestheticism and Sexual Parody 1840–1940 and the forthcoming Sexual Visuality from Literature to Film 1850–1950. He is one of the early members of the Kootenay School of Writing and he edited the first-ever collection of Canadian gay prose, Queeries.

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