Wayne Courtois
Author of A Report from Winter
About the Author
Image credit: Wayne Courtois
Works by Wayne Courtois
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Courtois, Wayne
- Legal name
- Courtois, Wayne Alan
- Birthdate
- 1954-05-10
- Gender
- male
- Places of residence
- South Portland, Maine, USA
Scarborough, Maine, USA
East Lansing, Michigan, USA
Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
New York, New York, USA
Kansas City, Missouri, USA - Education
- Michigan State University (BA/Honors College), University of North Carolina-Greensboro (MFA/Writing Program)
- Occupations
- Grants Manager
- Relationships
- Seligman, Ralph (Partner)
- Organizations
- American Association of Grant Professionals
- Awards and honors
- Erotic Authors Association, Best New Voice in Erotic Fiction, 2001
Members
Reviews
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 5
- Also by
- 7
- Members
- 35
- Popularity
- #405,584
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 2
- ISBNs
- 6
Sorry for the long preamble but it was necessary for you to understand that no, I wasn't really in the mood to read A Report from Winter, I didn't want to recall all I went through. But I promised that I would have given the book a chance and so I did. And I was soon surprised: A Report from Winter is a total different experience from mine. What Wayne is going through is not the sickening pain of a son who desperately doesn't want to loose his parent, Wayne is so estranged from his family, and his family from him, that he arrives to his mother death bed when she is so far on the illness that it seems she neither acknowledges his presence. And the people who are there, the one that I thought were lovingly taking care of an old dear mum, are more like two block of stone, unmoved by the events, only waiting for the death to arrive to finally being able to go back to their usually routine.
No this is not the heartbreaking narration of the death of a loving one, it's more the journey back to hell of a man that was trying to forget that that world still existed. Or at least I thought so at the beginning. Wayne was cold, his relatives were cold, the city was cold, the winter was cold. Like an ice shield around everything in this book, it was almost impossible to break through. And then little by little, the ice around Wayne melts, and the reader has the chance to see a different him, someone who probably is regretting some choice, even if, truth be told, they were the only possible and right, and healthy, for him to do. Also with the arriving of Ralph, Wayne's partner, we have the chance to see a different Wayne, and we realize that, the one we met at the beginning, was a little boy who was scared to come back, and that was wearing a ice cold mask to shield himself from any possible hurt.
There is not sudden revelation of an unknown true, there are no miraculously changes, only maybe the realization that, if a little boy thought his mother didn't love him, maybe it was since she herself wasn't loved before, and she didn't learn how to share things. There is maybe a man who remembers that, after all, his mother thought to him, in little things she did. And there is maybe the realization that, no, it wasn't useless for him to come back to say a final goodbye, because if he didn't do that, he would have regretted it for the rest of his life. Wayne had to know that his mother loved him, only she had a way to love him that wasn't the fictional love you are used to see on television or cinema.
I also loved the glimpse in Wayne's story with Ralph, the retelling of their first date, ended without even a kiss, and Wayne's pain afterward, a pain soon soothed by a simple phone call by Ralph, it was sweet and true.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590212355/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (more)