A Mind of Winter

By Eoghan Smith

A bitter January day on the outskirts of a small Irish university town, and Fox, a reclusive researcher, has just received a phone call. His former girlfriend Clara has brought word that his mentor and love rival Stoyte is gravely ill and, what's more, the dying man has some final things he needs to say. Now Fox must set out through the snow and ice to reckon with the ghosts of the past.

Poignant, haunting, and absurdly comic, A Mind of Winter is a tale of lost lives, guilt, punishment, and the cruelties we inflict upon ourselves and others.

'But this work isn't about plot, it's about rumination on a life not well lived, the life Fox had led up to now. He's a bitter old sod,but his bitterness is at least well written bitterness, clothed in some staggeringly beautiful passages. It's a fine piece of writing, full of admirable craftmanship.'

Anne Cunningham in The Meath Chronicle

'Smith does a wonderful job of conveying the half-baked thoughts and grievances of a disaffected intellectual, and the images of winter are especially crisp: ‘Every so often, ten or twelve glides or so, I would slow my pace to hear … the soft carelessness of the snow dropping on the gently shuddering hedgerows.’

Connor Harrison in The Literary Review

'In A Mind of Winter, Smith has fashioned a bleakly humorous, philosophical, and inescapably human story.'

Niall McArdle in Books Ireland

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dedalus Ebooks
• Release date: Jun 1, 2025
• ISBN: 9781915568489

Eoghan Smith

Eoghan Smith is an Irish writer, critic and academic. He is the author of three novels The Failing Heart (Dedalus, 2018) A Provincial Death (Dedalus, 2022) and A Mind of Winter(Dedalus, 2023). He has also written a monograph on John Banville and was co-editor of a collection of essays on Irish suburban literary and visual cultures. He has contributed numerous essays, articles and reviews on literature and visual culture to a variety of academic and literary publications, including The Irish Times, Books Ireland, Dublin Review of Books, Irish University Review and the Irish Studies Review.

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The cover image for A Mind of Winter by Eoghan Smith

Dedalus Ireland

Eoghan Smith is the author of the novels The Failing Heart (Dedalus, 2018), A Provincial Death (Dedalus, 2022) and A Mind of Winter (Dedalus, 2023).

He has contributed essays, articles and reviews to a wide variety of publications, including The Irish Times, Books Ireland, The Literary Review, The Dublin Review of Books, the Irish University Review, and the Irish Studies Review. He has also written a monograph on John Banville and was the co-editor of a collection of essays on Irish suburban literary and visual cultures.

The title page for My Father’s House by Karmele Jaio, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Sophie Hughes

Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited

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First published by Dedalus in 2023

A Mind of Winter © Eoghan Smith 2023

The right of Eoghan Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Elcograf S.p.A.

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.

to Aoife Webb

for all the reading

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

—Wallace Stevens, ‘The Snow Man’

Now, almost night. The snow will not stop falling, not for some time. Perhaps it will never stop, or at least, better say, not for as long as you can endure it. It is falling everywhere you look. It is falling on all creation. It is falling on the roof of the Lawlor cottage, and on the narrow track that leads through the garden. Past the iron gate, it is falling on the crossroads, and it is falling on the bare overhang of the ash and horse chestnut trees. Behind the rough lattice of boughs and branches, it is falling on Traynor’s yard, on his jumble of tractor tyres and pieces of metal and old forsaken things, on his crooked barns and outhouse roofs and chimney cowls. It is falling on the hard, conical faces of his Belclares, huddled in a corner of one of his fields. And on Traynor’s black cap and thick, rolling shoulders, it is falling too. It is falling on the stretches of the long road and of the short road, and it is falling on all the shivering animals trapped beneath the ice-shrouded bushes. It is falling on the hedgerows that line the ditches, and it is falling all over the winter-quieted housing estates on the outskirts of the town, a mile or two or three away, where it is falling on the slates and sills of the public library and locked-up cafes and convenience stores. It is falling on the last of the silent smokers who are loitering outside of the public house and it is falling on the empty playground in the field beside the fire station. Across the town square, opposite the unmanned police station, it is falling on the fragile crenellations atop the remains of the Norman castle, and, further beyond, it is falling through the thin, black railings of the college entrance and on the ancient yews in the front lawns. It is falling on the scattered buildings within, on the purplegreen ivied walls of Rhetoric House and Logic House, and it is falling against the newer glass and steel frames of the arts and science blocks. And somewhere—where?—there—in the old infirmary, it is falling against the windows, where this lean, russet-headed woman is hearing her husband breathe out his last. This is where he has come to die. The snow is falling in his mind, where it has been falling all winter. The woman’s hazel eyes are turned to those shifting sky-shades, where she knows it is falling on the graveyard below, a mile or two or three out the road. It is falling on the strip of ground where soon her husband will be buried, it is falling on the surrounding land, and on the narrow arteries of roads and hedges and canal ways, and on the faint, treeless hills that overlook it all. The woman, whose name is Clara, imagines it falling on you, where you have fallen, somewhere—where?—there—in a field, this field a mile or two or three from the edge of the town, perhaps, this field into which you have arrived as you made your way through the swirling brumes of snow dust. You must have lost your balance, to fall as you did. You don’t know precisely where you are. From somewhere, you can hear fretful bleating, as much as you know what fretful beating sounds like. Perhaps, you think, you are in one of Traynor’s fields, for Traynor owns all these fields, and perhaps it is he who will discover you in the end. You don’t know exactly how long you have lain here, in the snow, how long the interval has been. You only know that you have been cold a long time, that the horizon is cast with lead and shadow, that time passes insensibly, but in so passing it passes absolutely and equably for all things, and so it is passing for you. But although this frozen world around you appears motionless, and that you think you have not moved since you fell, you know that you have not yet truly come to rest, for even in you, where you are now, as with everywhere in all things that suffer love and death, there is—

Up, Fox, up

Up

—a blizzard in the heart. There is some time to make a start. Come on now. Get up from the bitter ground. Recollect yourself. Remember how you were, what you were doing. There is some time. Recover who you are, where you were going. Make a start. Here it comes. Here I am. This is it. This is my start. Tonight—no, tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll phone Clara. Or at least I’ll send a text. It’s me, Fox, is he dead? No, no, not that. It’s me, Fox, did you get any sleep? No, that won’t do, try again. It’s me, Fox, were you awake all night? Still not right. Clara, I am sorry. That’s significantly better. Expression of sadness. Conveyance of general regret. But do I mean it? And sorry for what, exactly? That I loved you Clara, could it be that for which I am sorry? And then, after the last of the bread and tea, after I have washed my face and brushed my hair,