The Heart in Winter is an unusual book.

At least, so far as my reading experience goes. Written in a something of a stream-of-consciousness approach -- I've seen some liken his style to that of Cormac McCarthy, and I've seen others dismiss the comparison out of hand -- author Kevin Barry gives little attention to things like punctuation and quotation marks; he simply rambles on, mimicking to some extent the meandering thoughts and emotions of his various characters.

And, as characters go, these are some humdingers.

Foremost among them is Tom Rourke, an Irish expatriate living a hardscrabble life in Butte, Montana, in the winter of 1891. Rourke is something of a poet, something of a ne'er-do-well, something of an opium addict with a taste for liquor and whores and a penchant for unpaid debt. Sometimes, he writes love letters for his illiterate friends, and sometimes he works for a local photographer, earning money for drugs, drinks and women making portraits of Butte's fashionable gentry.

Then in comes Polly Gillespie, a woman with a past lured to Butte by an offer of marriage from Anthony Harrington, a prosperous local mine owner and devout self-flagellator who is not at all sure how to interact with the stranger who is his new bride. When he takes her to have a wedding portrait made, Polly meets Tom, sparks fly, a passionate affair begins and, not two months into their acquaintance, the star-crossed couple flees Butte with stolen cash and a stolen horse and a fire behind them for the ambiguous destination of San Francisco.

They don't really know the way, it's worth noting, and neither is truly prepared for roughing it in the mountains in winter.

Perhaps it's a good thing, then, that they meet some helpful strangers along the way. Less good, for them, is the trio of Cornish gunmen that Harrington hires to find the couple and return them -- well, at least one of them -- intact.

The Heart in Winter is 243 pages of run-on prose, most of which is comprehensible to readers, some of which is bewildering, much of which is packed with poetic imagery. There's a session with psychedelic mushrooms along the way, as well as an extremely convenient stroke of myocardial infarction, fights, fires, an abandoned but well-stocked wilderness shack, a loyal horse, a missed train and ... oh, so much more.

Let me give you a taste of Barry's style, lifted from pages 105-106.

It was the season of lost souls.

The dead were plentiful on the streets of the town.

Who would be the next to join them?

A fine morning time question to chew over in Butte at that hour of our desperate lives, and the Hibernian brethren bowed their heads to it sombrely. In sympathy with them Fat Con moved like a sweet old ma behind the counter. He cut off the sausage links and the strips of bacon and flung them with artistic expression to the grill. He cut white loves on the slicer and chopped the liver into neat hanks with a murderer's relish. He was a man in his time. He was alive to his place and task. He swung his great belly from grill to counter and back again and there was grace to it. Dankly his occult coffee simmered and there were canteen pots of tay stewed black as porter. Dead bloodshot eyes sat in a row for him along the high stools and every last set of them was beholden. He rendered the fats and toasted the breads. It was a pale November sky beyond on North Main Street and Con Sullivan cracked his eggs with princely flourishes. He was dainty about his work as a jewelmaker. An icy gust of the wind assaulted the room when some big fool eejit stepped in and left the door wide open for the North Main view. Con Sullivan roared--

Ah bang out the fucken thing wouldn't ya and don't have us slaughtered altogether!

It was Stephen Devane, the sheriff, who stepped back and closed the door gently.

Didn't see it was yourself, Dev.

Evocative. Lyrical. And a bit annoying at first, but once you catch the flow, you drift comfortably along with Tom and Polly and the others who cross their path to help or hinder their flight from Montana. I wouldn't call this a feel-good romance novel by any stretch, but it's raw and emotional and a damn good read.