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Winkie

Clifford Chase

3.07 · Rating details · 1,807 ratings · 315 reviews

Na jarenlang verwaarloosd te zijn geweest door het jongetje dat ooit veel van hem hield, neemt Winkie het lot in eigen handen. Hij werpt zich van zijn plank, springt het raam uit en trekt het bos in. Maar net als hij de geneugten van mobiliteit, onafhankelijkheid en zelfs ware liefde heeft ontdekt, raakt hij verstrikt in een samenleving die is dolgedraaid door angst en par ...more

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Paperback, 233 pages

Published 2006

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· 1,807 ratings · 315 reviews

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Jul 17, 2007 Allison rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I dunno, dude.

Bear comes alive, gets mistaken for terrorist. Sounds vaguely interesting. Unfortunately, the writing is so dry, it really isn't.

Besides, the entire thing reads like an inside joke you're not allowed in on -- allusions to Foucault, Lacan, Whitman, famous trials like Scopes and Salem, etc. Plus the bear learns to poop and gives birth to a child that later disappears by sheer self-determinism. Author makes a cameo appearance as a kid who shits in his pants until he stops playing with ...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Joel rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish, 2008

It sounded so interesting, but I just couldn't bear to finish it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

...

Sigh. ...more

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Dec 02, 2007 Trish rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: hated

It's the story of a teddy bear that is passed down from a mother through her five children, and then left neglected on a shelf. Finally the bear's consciousness begets movement and Winkie escapes. He goes to live in the forest and bears a child, a mini-me called Baby Winkie. This idyll is interupted when a mad man of the forest, a Unabomber type whose bombs never explode, becomes obsessed with Baby Winkie and bear-naps her. She escapes from captivity by winking herself out of existence; the man ...more

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Nov 12, 2008 Michelle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: q1

Winkie

By Clifford Chase
236 pp. Canada
Williamson Music. $12.00
ISBN-10: 0802118305
ISBN-13: 978-0802118301

Did you ever wonder “What’s the purpose of your life or why did you like this?” In the book “Winkie” it’s about a teddy bear named Winkie and it’s about a journey that he took to find who he is and where he comes from but there’s one problem. The police/army put him on arrest while he had done nothing wrong. Soon they decided to send him jail until they gain more information. While he was ...more

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Dec 11, 2007 Danine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Che & Tara

Recommended to Danine by: Kate

I adore this book. A unique anthropomorphic tale of a teddy bear who decided to take his life in his own paws. He is loved and neglected and the neglect drives him to jump on the lonely shelf he was placed on for several years. He wishes for freedom, food and to learn how to poo-poo.

There is some philosophy but the book is not heavily laden with philosophical ramblings as some of the previous reviewers have spoke about. It makes you think just a teeny tiny bit and if that's too much from a book ...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Raven rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction

Winkie is a well-loved teddy bear who gets tired of sitting on a shelf, waiting for yet another child to pick him up and love him. Tired of decades of tedium and sameness, he decides to make himself real. So he wills himself off the shelf, and out into the world. Once out in the real world, Winkie quickly finds himself on trial, accused of gross terroristic acts against humanity.

What is intended as biting social commentary on how terrorism is regarded in America today, instead comes off as petu ...more

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Aug 17, 2009 Martha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Here is a wonderful and unique imagination at work. Winkie is as scary as a nightmare and captivating as a child's game although a somewhat evil child. ...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Seregil of Rhiminee rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Clifford Chase's Winkie is a weird, satirical, philosophical, thought-provoking and touching fantasy book about a sentient teddy bear called Winkie. Winkie is a nice and innocent teddy bear, who just happens to be in a wrong place at a wrong time and is arrested. Winkie is accused of terrorism and other things, because people believe that Winkie is responsible for several nasty things.

I think it's interesting that the author has written a book a sentient teddy bear. An innocent teddy bear is an ...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Nikki rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Winkie is a very well-written and imaginative book that casts a loveable old teddy bear in the lead role.

If that sentence put an idea in your head about how this book will play out, dash it right now! You're wrong. I was wrong.

I imagined a tale of "Toy Story 3" proportions that would leave me in tears and hugging my old toys with fervoured nostalgia. Well, I got it partly right:

^ This is Brown Bear and he's a good bear.

But, the fact is, that this is a strange book and nothing like the story I ...more

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Mar 01, 2010 Robert rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This story was really two books in one. The first was the beautiful and moving story of a teddy bear who wills himself to life and wanders the world enjoying all of life's most basic and wonderful experiences. The descriptions are wonderfully rendered through the eyes of innocence and the bear's grasp of the beauty of life is spellbinding.
The second story line is a satirical look at the judicial system as a whole and the war on terror specifically. It is dripping with sarcasm and almost over th ...more

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Dec 28, 2019 Suzanne Simpson rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I found this book in a charity shop and after reading the back thought it was either going to be really good or really bad. I decided to try it and I have to say I think it is both. It is unique and I couldn't stop reading it because it was so strange. I laughed at how ridiculous it was, it was so bad I needed to see how it went. Not in a boring way but a "where on earth is this going" kind of way.
I am not sure if there were deep meanings behind what was going on (if there was I missed them). I ...more

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Jun 13, 2012 Rick rated it it was ok · review of another edition

After suffering decades of neglect from the children who have forgotten him, Winkie summons the courage to take charge of his fate, and so he hops off the shelf, jumps out the window, and takes to the forest. But just as he is discovering the joys and wonders of mobility, Winkie gets trapped in the jaws of a society gone rabid with fear and paranoia. He (yes, he) gives birth to a cub, only to see the newborn captured by a bomb-building woodsman Unabomber. Winkie arrives at the hermit's cabin to After suffering decades of neglect from the children who have forgotten him, Winkie summons the courage to take charge of his fate, and so he hops off the shelf, jumps out the window, and takes to the forest. But just as he is discovering the joys and wonders of mobility, Winkie gets trapped in the jaws of a society gone rabid with fear and paranoia. He (yes, he) gives birth to a cub, only to see the newborn captured by a bomb-building woodsman Unabomber. Winkie arrives at the hermit's cabin to save the cub, but the terrorist, who is surrounded with explosive devices and plans for attacks, has died of a heart attack. The clueless feds arrive and mistake Winkie for a dangerous, transgender teddy terrorist. Following are 9,678 counts of murder, sedition and filthy sexual activity.

This all sounds much more interesting and entertaining when summarized than it actually is when read. At the end of the day, Winkie amounts to a lot of empty promises and a frustrating lack of execution.

There are two narratives at play here: 1) a series of flashbacks that recount three significant memories in Winkie's life, and 2) the story that frames these reminiscences: Winkie's capture and subsequent trial at the hands of the hysterical American justice system.

Winkie is a teddy bear who has—through means that are never truly explained (divine intervention, manifest destiny, you decide)—developed the abilities to move and think and feel. At the beginning of the book he is living in a cabin in the woods, lonely and bereaved over the loss of his child. All of a sudden he is arrested by a small army of law enforcement agents for reasons he can't really understand and walked through a Kafka-esque nightmare of American jurisprudence.

The real beating heart of this book, though, is in the three vivid memories he re-lives throughout the story. Trapped and knowing his time may be over, Winkie goes over his life, trying to figure how he might have done things differently. He remembers his first owner and his last owner, and the days each of them stopped loving him.

While marginally affecting, and delivered with great sensitivity, these memories are cloying and emotional manipulative. They're also chock-full of lines like, "If only Cliff loved him like before, with the old fervor, Winkie could be happy being a toy forever."

In the third reminiscence, Winkie relives the discovery of his ability to move. The product of extreme isolation and boredom, Winkie's literal shelf-life makes Jean-Paul Sartre look like Liam fucking Gallagher. But this makes him a new being, a strangeness that isn't understood by the rest of the world, a man/woman (no one seems to know, not even Winkie) with his own cub and a life of his own making, a life that the human world is unwilling to leave alone.

But as smart and moving as these memories can be, the frame story undermines the whole thing with a ceaseless barrage of trivial, hyperbolic attempts at satire. Suspected of violations of the Homeland Security Act, Winkie suddenly finds himself in court, accused of every significant crime in Western history, including consorting with witches, the sexual quirks of Oscar Wilde, and even the transgressions of Socrates as related by Plato.

I understand the premise. Winkie is utterly powerless and is being trampled upon by a faceless, monolithic authority for no other reason than the fact that he is different. It's meant to satirize America's panic over terrorism post-9/11 and humanity's need to place blame on the likeliest of people: those we don't understand.

I get it. But this is, essentially, the sole point of the novel. Clifford Chase's satire strikes only this one obvious note, and he didn't need to take 256 pages to say it. A lesson in economy this book is not. Chase did with a novel what some people can do with a fortune cookie.

Some of it is excellent, but most of it is awful, and the sum total of Winkie ends up being a motley collection in which the good and the bad are bound together in a way that is memorable, yet wholly unsatisfying. A plot this bizarre needs to be handled with utmost skill in order to just break even, but Chase's inability to realize his insane story's potential makes the concept sound more like a homeless man's fever dream than the premise of a legit novel.

It's books like Winkie that make me wish that novels were occasionally re-written by more talented authors in the way movies (sometimes) are. Winkie has a good book inside it somewhere, but Clifford Chase has neither the subtlety nor knack for storytelling needed to pull it off. It's not an easy feat, granted, but Chase fails. Hard. ...more

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Oct 29, 2008 Aaron rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I was enjoying this book quite a bit at first. And then I began to get bored with it. And then it picked up again. And then I had to wonder what the fucking point was. Who the fuck cares?

Winkie is a book that I had been following the reviews of for a while. I was anxious to read it. Eager. It's gotten good reviews. And I don't want to say that the good reviews are unfounded because the book is good. But there is a disconnect in tone throughout the book that, in my opinion, drags the whole procee I was enjoying this book quite a bit at first. And then I began to get bored with it. And then it picked up again. And then I had to wonder what the fucking point was. Who the fuck cares?

Winkie is a book that I had been following the reviews of for a while. I was anxious to read it. Eager. It's gotten good reviews. And I don't want to say that the good reviews are unfounded because the book is good. But there is a disconnect in tone throughout the book that, in my opinion, drags the whole proceedings down.

The book is about a teddy bear who feels unloved and abandoned by his owners, wills himself to life, and inadvertently becomes the key suspect in a terrorist bombing plot. The notion that the government believes, even for a minute, that a teddy bear could be responsible for terrorist attacks is an amusing one, but it isn't enough to hang an entire novel on.

Winkie finds himself in court, forced to defend himself against crimes he did not commit. The trial that ensues ends up encompassing the trials of a whole slew of famous people who never actually did anything wrong (Oscar Wilde, Copernicus, etc.) and this section of the book is delightful. It works really well. But the section of the book where Winkie is out in the wild, fending for himself, caring for his own bear cub child really slows the book down. And not because it's unbelievable (one tends to suspend their disbelief from the get-go), but because it's too well-written. This whole section of the book is written in a poetic prose style with lots of big words and gorgeous imagery that ceases to work when you realize at various sections of the work that Winkie cannot actually talk. How can an inarticulate bear be so articulate?

If Chase could have kept the amusing tone he keeps throughout the arrest and the trial, then the "moving" bear-as-human sections would have worked better. As it stands, there is a disparity between the novel Chase thinks he's writing and the novel he's actually written. Which is too bad, because Chase is equally good at both the absurd and the moving. It's unfortunate that he has no inkling of an idea how to meld the two.

...more

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Jun 27, 2009 Lin rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

This book took me forever to get through. Because... well, it's not actually that good. It starts out well, with some nice magical realism and a touch of the absurd which I usually love, but soon it gets out of control with the absurd and the author sort of... lost me. It's pretty clear at first that the story is a big honking metaphor and aspires to be an intelligent sort of satire, but it loses its point halfway through by being so painfully weird and oddly masturbatory (shameless self-insert ...more

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Nov 30, 2018 Jeanne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, literary-fiction

OMG, this was phenomenal. The premise was so bizarre, yet once I got into the story it became absolutely plausible. This novel is heartfelt, quirky, and if you like magical realism, you will love this. It's not what you'll expect, if you read the synopsis. It is indescribable. It is unlike any book I've ever read. If I say anything more, I will give it away. Just read it. Fresh idea, fresh voice, fresh premise, and it will leave you very satisfied and possibly restore a little glimmer of your lo ...more

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Aug 05, 2007 Thea rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pastbooksread

So it's been a long time ago that I read this...I will attempt to remember what I thought: very weird, very surreal, and well written. Lots of social commentary, maybe too much time spent on the trial portion of the book. The subplot of Winkie and his/her child was heartbreaking. Overall I liked it and would recommend it to others. ...more

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Jun 01, 2008 Louise rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: strange, read-2007

A story about a teddy bear who comes to life and is accused of terrorism. Sounds completely insane right? But it wasn't, it somehow made sense, it was funny, touching, tragic and a great look at the insanity of modern life and the so called 'War on Terror' ...more

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Apr 23, 2016 Todd Slutzky rated it liked it · review of another edition

Meh. Three stars is maybe being generous. Interesting premise. But felt like 3 different stories meshed together somewhat poorly.

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Aug 07, 2020 Carmen rated it it was ok · review of another edition

The summary is overly generous. "Scathingly funny": Not even close. More like "Nails-on-a-blackboard irritating". This part is true: "trapped in the jaws of a society gone rabid with fear and paranoia." The only piece I wrote down from this book was when the prosecutor was interviewing an army general on the witness stand:

"...they are nothing less than an army of super-combatants, trained to maim and kill." The general revealed his next chart. "And created, we believe, by a scientific process we ...more

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Nov 08, 2018 Kate Atonic rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I picked this up not long after I read Dick’s “Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend.” I assumed that a story about a well loved childhood toy that achieves sentience and mobility would have the same sort of bitter sweetness and nostalgia, maybe a little “Velveteen Rabbit” for good measure. Instead, the author tries to impress us with sophomoric musings about what it means “to be” and meaning of life, skewering the American judicial system and the war or terror. The images of the misshapen and battered ...more

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Feb 11, 2021 Pietro Maximoff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

this book was heartwarming and silly. it definitely feels like a first novel at times, but the main character, sentient teddy bear Winkie, is so lovable. some parts of the book felt like a bit much, but it's a satirical comedy book about a living teddy bear, so it's easiest to go with the flow and not question the universe too much. there's also some really great LGBT representation in here, which was pleasantly surprising. a fun read that was easy to get through, i'd recommend this for anyone w ...more

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Oct 11, 2019 Nadine rated it liked it · review of another edition

You'll love it or hate it. It's well written and the structure works really well for the book. That said, it's out there (in a way that tries a bit too hard to be Kafkaesque). It's a quick read though, if you can stay with the plot. Overall interesting and I do think that the author tried to do something different and succeeded, with some beautifully written prose along the way. But if you don't like things that are a little wacky, may not be the book for you. ...more

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May 21, 2017 Klaudia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: loved-books

Amazing, bizarre, a little grotesque. The book shows in the most simple way the trouble that difference in people may cause to the system. My favourite thing about the book is how straight forward it is about wrong of categorisation and how difficult is life for a person that does not fulfill social expectations towards them.

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Jul 01, 2019 Melissa Borges rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I ended up really liking this. Once I got over the teddy bear giving birth and breast feeding, I was able to accept that in this world everything is symbolic and nothing is impossible. It made the court scene that followed a lot more entertaining. I was not anticipating this book to be so political (especially so anti American), but I found the messages pretty powerful.

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Nov 12, 2017 GWNBookClub rated it it was ok · review of another edition

What our book club thought: General consensus was the book failed miserably as a satire and nearly failed as a reading experience! As our inaugural book, it was hilarious to have chosen a bad one, and some of us still refer to it today, all these months later. :) (1)

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Sep 08, 2020 Amanda rated it liked it · review of another edition

So, if you took The Trial and The Velveteen Rabbit, and you put them in a blender, this book is what you would pour into a mug to sip like spiked hot chocolate on a winter night.

Weird? yes.
Confusing? a little.
Sad? a bit.
Satisfying? greatly.

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