If Winter Comes
A. S. M. Hutchinson, Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Feb. 13, 2017)
"Not only a thrilling tale, it is an important work of art. It has a real and skillfully constructed plot; the hero is unforgettable, and even the minor characters are impressively human; it abounds in humor and wit, the laughter of fun and the laughter of the mind; it is based on the spiritual truth revealed to the world some nineteen hundred years ago. Its author is a creative artist and a spiritual force." -William Lyon Phelps, The New York Times "Read it today so that you can talk about it with the rest of the world." -The Boston Herald "In Mark Sabre, Mr. Hutchinson has surely created a great character." -The New York Evening Post "The whole word is reading 'If Winter Comes.' The expression, of course, is a figure of speech. For the whole world in this case merely means the whole world which reads novels written in the English tongue....But what does that make of it - a bestseller or a great book? The two, it is true, may be one. They sometimes are, but the odds are against it....The critics...are proclaiming 'If Winter Comes' the successor of the royal line of 'The Egoist,' of 'Vanity Fair,' of 'Pickwick,' of 'Clarissa,' or of 'Tom Jones.'...It is a story of English life, before and after the war, in which the author has not found it necessary to descend to gross immoralities to show his knowledge....The story itself is admirably told, whilst the dialogue is clever without being unnatural....The world is exceedingly wise in reading Mr. Hutchinson's book." -The International Interpreter "When the story opens, in 1912, in Penny Green, England, Mark Sabre is thirty-four years old and has been married eight years. He is a whimsical, lovable idealist, always in the minority on every question, bound to be misunderstood, and most of all by his wife Mabel, who is practical, conventional, without humor or imagination, and a snob. The ability to see another's point of view, which Mark has had from childhood, enables him to understand and excuse his wife's criticism and he remains loyal to her. Business relationships are as unsympathetic as those of home, but in loneliness and misfortune, and finally, bitterest tragedy, his character develops and deepens till it becomes really Christlike. Through all there is one woman who understands and who in the end restores for him the light and vision which cruel wrong and misrepresentation had for the time almost extinguished." -Book Review Digest "It is an artist's book - its structure is close and exquisite as a flower, its humor pervasive, its character studies keen and varied, its personal note spicy and fresh, and best of all, its dealing with the great fundamentals of life and death, of God and the soul, courageous, poignant, intuitive and nobly Christian." -Atlantic's Bookshelf "The home background of the war, touched only slightly, was never more skillfully done even in 'Mr. Britling.' Hutchinson's dialogue sparkles, hits, jumps, races - does practically everything that human talk should." -Bookman "No review, no amount of comment or praise, can reveal the warm humanity of this story. If ever the mirror were held up to nature, it is held up by Mr. Hutchinson in 'If Winter Comes'; if ever man were recreated in a literary image that man is his Mark Sabre." -Boston Transcript "It has the style of a 'novel of ideas'; the characterization of a novel of purpose; the mood of a novel of sentiment; and the mechanism of a novel of sensation. Finally, and the best thing to be said of it, it is a book of faith and optimism; a book in which, for our comfort in a credulous hour, the dream and the business seem not too hopelessly far apart." -Independent