I had initially thought I would enjoy this book which is a trilogy of shorter tales rather than a novel, although there are connecting characters and an underlying theme. The hero, only 16 at the start, is an engaging young would-be detective Xavier Kilgarvan, whose heroes include Sherlock Holmes. A horrifying case occurs at a mansion belonging to another branch of his family - where two uncles live and the three daughters of the eldest, both being brothers of his father. Xavier's father has been disinherited and ostracised by the rest of the family, and as the stories progress the general consensus is that this was unjust.

Xavier falls for his young cousin Perdita, one of the three daughters in question, and his life is governed by his unceasing passion for her despite her faithless and generally sociopathic behaviour. Meanwhile he remains oblivious to the unrequited love of her sister Therese, who is good-natured, intelligent and self-sacrificing.

The first story is a tragedy, where Xavier keeps secret the solution given the scandal it would cause the other branch of the family. Although it is effectively spooky in places, it is rather a cheat in that the detective genre which this supposedly fits into (the author's afterword makes it clear that in her five gothic novels she tackled particular genres, and the detective-mystery genre was the target here), it has a solution which would never be contemplated in any genuine story of the genre since it is entirely supernatural.

In the second story, echoes of Jack the Ripper and similar serial murders are evoked. Xavier is now twenty-eight, and lives in New York where he makes a successful living as a detective, but he returns to Winterthurn to try to track down the killer. He soon knows who it is, but his difficulty is in proving it. The reader also knows early on if they picked up on the MO used to kill a certain character's sister in the first story. The case ends ignominiously for Xavier when the killer presents a supernatural excuse for his crimes in court, and it is Xavier's own family who end up suffering, with him being cut off by his own parents as a result. He now seems permanently estranged from Perdita also, and she informs him of her decision to marry a good Christian man who will counteract her perceived inner evil.

In the final story, Xavier is having a midlife crisis as his fortieth birthday approaches. He responds to an anonymous summons back to Winterthurn and arrives shortly after a gruesome triple murder at the vicarage which, over time, leads directly to the rekindling of his relationship with the now widowed Perdita. Xavier is convinced of the killer's identity, pursues him, and eventually the community is also convinced he is right - yet he suffers an existential crisis and lives at a friend's for months, sunk in depression. There is a supposed happy ending for Perdita and he, and yet I couldn't help thinking that the real killer was much closer to home given certain clues dropped into the story. I found myself growing increasingly impatient with Xavier, especially in the final story. I also felt sorry for the ever faithful Therese, although her eventual 'settling' for a good man was probably the best thing she could have done.

The stories are held together by the interjections of an editor who in some places has omniscient insight into the thoughts of the characters - even those who die immediately afterwards without passing on those thoughts to anyone - and yet at other times is totally ignorant of what happened (a case in point being the 'quicksand' episode in the second story). The style is also a very laboured pastiche of 19th century style, not seen in actual classic novels, and in any case inappropriate - the editor makes it clear that he or she is writing some time after the last case which occurred shortly before WWI. So a more appropriate style would be something along the lines of Erskine Childers' "Riddles in the Sand" or even Agatha Christie whose first novel was published in 1920, not this laboured cod-Victoriana. All in all, I found this book rather a disappointment and am therefore rating it at an OK 2 stars. ( )

This book is written in the style of the 19th-century American Gothic. Three different mysteries, centered around the same characters over the span of their lifetimes. Very well-written, although it got a bit drawn out towards the end! You will definitely need to set aside a chunk of time and concentration for this one! ( )

Posted in the group Club Read 2009 on Sept. 26, 2009.

It had not seemed like an entirely quixotic plan to write a sequence of "genre" novels linked by political, cultural, and moral (especially "feminist") themes, set in a long-ago/mythic America intended to suggest contemporary times: a Gothic family saga, a nineteenth-century 'romance," a saga of Gothic horror . . . and a "novel of mystery and detection." It had not seemed quixotic — but then, it never does, for otherwise we would not have outsized and unclassifiable works of art, of any kind — to hope that there might be readers for such novels, that seek to transform what might be called psychological realism into "Gothic" elements . . . Joyce Carol Oates in the Author's Afterword for Mysteries of Winterthurn.

I include the excerpt above because the author herself does a fine job of describing this superb novel. Mysteries of Winterthurn is a collection of three inter-related stories - mysteries - cases 'solved' by the renowed American detective Xavier Kilgarven. Our narrator is a private collector of "Murder", as he puts it, an amateur expert, looking back upon the time of these 'cases' in the late 19th century. He tells the tales with a wonderful, heightened language and much omniscience (considering he is just a 'collector'). He leads the reader down a merry path (ok, 'merry' may not be the right word here) with many a short excursion hinter and yon. It's delightfully frustrating (of course, I know that is an oxymoron!) when the reader is anxious about the fate of our hero, or the verdict of a jury.

Winterthurn is a small city, full of large family estates with their pedigreed occupants (the Kilgarvens are but one of them), and all of the other things a bustling American city of the late 19th century might have (i.e. mills, millworkers, boarding houses, cottages, churches . . .). Xavier is a young man who has not yet left the city to find fame and fortune in Manhattan in the first tale, and middle-aged in the last. There is something that plagues him internally about these mysteries in his home town.

There is certainly a lot I could say about why I so enjoyed Winterthurn — in short,it is an wonderfully entertaining, thought-provoking novel. In the afterward, Oates talks briefly about why we are attracted to classic Gothic tales, a sort of acting out of an inner reality (my paraphrase). I find myself mulling that from time to time and really enjoying the mull when I do!

Strangely, I read this book over the course of about two months. I would read a chapter or two and then set it aside while I read something else. I'm not sure why I did that, it certainly was not out of disinterest, but I don't regret reading it in such a way. This is a not-for-everyone novel, I suppose, but it has become, I think, my favorite Oates work. ( )

This is a truly brilliant book. I think it might be the Great American Novel. ( )

Well, it was a wild read...very intense at times, I could not put it down, I stayed up way too many nights late reading it! It was over the top creepy and beautifully written too...if you can imagine, an odd combo, beauty and creepy, not quite a 'you got chocolate in my peanut butter'...it's one of those combined flavors you've never had before and not sure if you're gonna like...which is a typical JCO novel. There are books that are an acquired taste and some books require a reader to have the flexibility to read them with an open mind and welcome the writing as it is and not go into it with preconceived notions set in concrete...and take an unexpected journey into a story unlike anything you've read before...that is the beauty of books. ( )