- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Canada (APB); 1st edition (Sep 22 1994)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0140242848
- ISBN-13: 978-0140242843
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #640,998 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
It took George Bowering a few attempts to express adequately his fascination with the explorer George Vancouver. After a book-length poem and an ensuing radio play on the same subject, Bowering decided to write a novel about Vancouver. Burning Water, which won the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1980, recounts Vancouver's last voyage to the Pacific Northwest, an attempt to do a meticulous survey of the coast and find a western entrance to the Northwest Passage. Vancouver's character becomes as important as the story itself, and two of his relationships dominate the book: his homosexual love affair with the Spanish captain Don Juan Francisco la Bodega y Quadra and his bitter rivalry with his own ship's naturalist, Archibald Menzies.
Burning Water tells a straightforward, linear narrative, but it does so from within the trappings of postmodernist fiction. The novel often breaks into authorial asides, abandoning a scene in progress in favour of a sort of third-person author's journal. Many of Bowering's characters are deliberately unrealistic and function as historical puppets. They speak a dialect that is half-antiquated and half-modern. Only Vancouver and Menzies gain any real individuality, and their belligerent personalities chafe against the confines of their duties to history as the Great Explorer and the Great Naturalist, leading, eventually, to a murder. It's not a murder that matches the historical record, however, and readers who are uncomfortable with this type of storytelling would do well to avoid Burning Water. However, those who are comfortable with the self-doubting tactics of postmodern historical writing will find much to enjoy here. --Jack Illingworth
Review
"Casual, funny, anachronistic ... Bowering's account is lively and lewd."— -- The Vancouver Sun
"Elegantly written, funny... nearer to the real George Vancouver than the books of fact and history can ever take us."— -- The Hamilton Spectator
"Provocative...imbued with high humour and imagination."— -- The Globe and Mail
"Elegantly written, funny... nearer to the real George Vancouver than the books of fact and history can ever take us."— -- The Hamilton Spectator
"Provocative...imbued with high humour and imagination."— -- The Globe and Mail
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
4.0 out of 5 stars
European Invaders, Oct 22 2008
By R. Pierotti "CanLitFan" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Burning Water (Paperback)
Burning Water is a book for readers who like their history leavened with imagination. The basic story is of the mapping of the Inside Passage and Puget Sound by George Vancouver, but this book is much more than that. The character of Vancouver himself is interesting and quite believable: Competent and tormented, autocratic and lovelorn, he worms his way into your heart almost despite himself. Residents of the Pacific Northwest will never think of Peter Puget and sundry other characters who have leant their names to various Northwestern geographical features in the same way again. This is the rare book that mixes the story of the European explorers with that of the Indigenous peoples who occupied these lands long before they were "discovered" by Europeans. This book is often funny and irreverent, but it can also be heart-rending and tragic. I think most people interested in the Pacific Northwest and/or Canadian History will find it a good reading experience. On the other hand I suspect that readers of British Naval history might be offended. this is not Master and Commander, but neither is it a Flashman adventure.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
