Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of the Year, 2010, Commended, Annabel.
Quill and Quire Books of the Year, 2010, Commended, Annabel.
Amazon.ca Best Books of the Year, 2010, Commended, Annabel.
New York Times Editors' Choice, 2011, Commended, Annabel.
Amazon.ca First Novel Award, 2011, Short-listed, Annabel.
Scotiabank Giller Prize, 2010, Short-listed, Annabel.
Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, 2010, Short-listed, Annabel.
Governor General's Award: Fiction, 2010, Short-listed, Annabel.
Vancouver Sun Top 10 Canadian Books of the Year, 2010, Commended, Annabel.
Independent Literary Awards, 2010, Winner, Annabel.
OLA Evergreen Award, 2011, Short-listed, Annabel.
CBC Bookies: Best Overall Book, 2011, Short-listed, Annabel.
CBC Bookies: Best Scene, 2011, Short-listed, Annabel.
Orange Prize for Fiction, 2011, Short-listed, Annabel.
Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award , 2011, Winner, Annabel.
ReLit Awards: Novel, 2011, Long-listed, Annabel.
IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2011, Long-listed, Annabel.
...a stunning novel, one of the rare kind that might well imbed itself permanently in a reader's psyche.
- New Glasgow News
. . . a captivating romantic novel with a happy ending.
- Canadian Literature
. . . a confident, serious debut.
- Guardian
Winter's dazzling debut addresses the riddle of gender and the tragedy of conformity with astonishing insight and eloquence.
- Gay Calgary and Edmonton Magazine
. . . beautifully paced, sometimes shocking and never prurient.
- Intelligent Life Magazine
This is a remarkable first novel, an accomplished debut by an exciting new voice with a confident, mature style.
- Daily Express
. . . a poignant and powerful first novel . . .
- Montreal Gazette
. . . Annabel is a novel about divisions, not only between the sexes but also between social classes and, perhaps most crucially, ways of being . . . Winter does a deft job of developing all the characters fully and making their motives understandable . . . It's to Winter's credit that both the fear and the beauty are given vivid expression in this finely crafted novel.
- Toronto Star
A book like this, its topic and beautiful language, the unrelenting sorrow, Winter's insightful characterizations and utter sensitivity, is difficult to do justice to with these few words. I simply want to tell people: read this book. Read it though you know little or nothing about its subject or the author. It will open you up. It will change you.
- Ottawa Citizen
Annabel is an unforgettable novel of struggles, personal and inter-personal, and Winter's empathetic voice does them justice in a way that connects reader to story. Destined to be one of the biggest novels out of Newfoundland this year, this is a story of isolation and a communication breakdown that breaks a family down, and breaks the reader down along with them.
- St. John's Telegram
Annabel is a stunning and stirring debut that signals the long-overdue arrival of a literary talent.
- Halifax Chornicle Herald
Annabel's strength lies in probing the dilemma of sexuality and self-knowledge. I have never read such an intimate portrait of a person struggling to live inside a self that the world sees as a dreadful mistake.
- National Post
. . . utterly original . . . a haunting story of family, identity, and the universal yearning to belong.
- O Magazine
Read it because it's a story told with sensitivity to language that compels to the last page, and read it because it asks the most existential of questions. Stripped of the trappings of gender, [Kathleen] Winter asks, what are we?
- Globe and Mail
Reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides' magnificent 2002 novel Middlesex, Winter's treatment of such a delicate issue is amazing and incredibly engaging. Her novel is written with immense sensitivity and grace, not to be missed.
- Bay Area Reporter
Wayne proves a compelling narrator . . . you are going to choke up, don't even try not to. [. . .] The truth is, none of us knows what any of us is going to turn out like, and that's always a story worth telling.
- 2BMag
[Kathleen Winter's] lyrical voice and her crystalline landscape are enchanting.
- New Yorker
...a sprawling book filled with musical prose...
- The Walrus
The Montreal-based Winter, a native of Newfoundland, possesses a rare blend of lyrical brilliance, descriptive power and psychological and philosophical insight...A compelling, gracefully written novel about mixed gender that sheds insight as surely as it rejects sensationalism. This book announces the arrival of a major writer.
- Kirkus Reviews
Winter has written an ambitious first novel set in a little-known corner of the country and peopled by memorable guides.
- Montreal Review of Books
It’s this complexity of vision, this refusal to accept false absolutes that makes Annabel such a stunning novel...
- The Scope
Annabel...provided satisfying respite and insight.
- Guelph Mercury
There is a haunting beauty to Winter’s depictions of the natural world.
- Edmonton Journal
Annabel is a beautifully sensitive novel, populated with realistic characters and lit by a powerful sense of place. It deserves multiple readings, as its sensibility, the richness of its description and its sheer honesty grip the heart.
- The Vancouver Sun
Put "Annabel" right at the top of your summer reading list, and save it for a day when you have several lazy hours to live in its world.
- The Northeast Avalon Times