A bitter January day on the outskirts of a small Irish university town, and Fox, a reclusive researcher, has just received a phone call. His former girlfriend Clara has brought word that his mentor and love rival Stoyte is gravely ill and, what's more, the dying man has some final things he needs to say. Now Fox must set out through the snow and ice to reckon with the ghosts of the past. Poignant, haunting, and absurdly comic, A Mind of Winter is a tale of lost lives, guilt, punishment, and the cruelties we inflict upon ourselves and others. 'But this work isn't about plot, it's about rumination on a life not well lived, the life Fox had led up to now. He's a bitter old sod,but his bitterness is at least well written bitterness, clothed in some staggeringly beautiful passages. It's a fine piece of writing, full of admirable craftmanship.' Anne Cunningham in The Meath Chronicle 'Smith does a wonderful job of conveying the half-baked thoughts and grievances of a disaffected intellectual, and the images of winter are especially crisp: 'Every so often, ten or twelve glides or so, I would slow my pace to hear ... the soft carelessness of the snow dropping on the gently shuddering hedgerows.' Connor Harrison in The Literary Review 'In A Mind of Winter, Smith has fashioned a bleakly humorous, philosophical, and inescapably human story.' Niall McArdle in Books Ireland