The Winters

The Winters, by Lisa Gabriele, is a page-turning tribute to Rebecca, with a blend of modern and gothic secrets.

Our unnamed protagonist is working as a crew hand in the Cayman Islands, when a handsome, recently widowed banker comes in looking for a boat, and it’s love at first sight. After a speedy courtship, Max Winters asks her to marry him and move back to New York with him.

But the Cinderella story twists on Long Island, where she finds her new home is a monument to her husband’s first wife, and inhabited by their moody, hostile daughter. There’s a contrast between the subtle distance from the household servants (telling her to enjoy her visit, for example) and the open animosity from Dani, but the house is unfriendly and unfamiliar. Max has  secrets, too, in case being a New York banker with undisclosed business in the Cayman Islands didn’t tip you off.

This is such a gothic story — the family estate is only accessible by a winding, deserted bridge, part of the house is a locked-off memorial to the first Mrs. Winter, there are loads of dark roses delivered constantly in her memory, there’s the threat of insanity and imprisonment, and there’s a massive greenhouse that no one may ever enter again.  This isn’t a historical novel, this is a modern-day Long Island banker and politician, living his best brooding-gothic life.

The narrator is never named, and she doesn’t say her age or at times, even her appearance is vague. I often find this kind of device a bit gimmicky (I want to read a story, not watch a trick),  but it works here because for so much of the story, she is passive, mostly acted-on by others and not really a driving force. By the time she develops some agency, I’d forgotten the omission.

I loved the reveals and secrets, even though if you’ve read Rebecca, there are some clues. There are also hints of Jane Eyre here, which adds to the mood. The modern setting makes it harder to accept some of gothic-horror red flags (Surely there’s some rational, everyday reason no one can ever enter the greenhouse? Maybe it’s structurally unsound and Max just wants her to be safe?) which adds another layer of suspense because the narrator’s never quite able to trust what she sees, hears, and discovers in the mansion.