- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Anchor Canada; later printing edition (Dec 4 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385259115
- ISBN-13: 978-0385259118
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 12.4 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #400,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
At the beginning of Cape Breton Road, D.R. MacDonald's 19-year-old protagonist finds himself deported from Boston, where he's stolen one too many cars. Innis is sent back to his native Nova Scotia--or more precisely, to remote Cape Breton Island. There he is exiled to the old family farmhouse to live with his reluctant uncle, whose penchant for booze and girls leaves little time for supervising an errant nephew. Not surprisingly, Innis at once looks for an escape. From time to time he hikes up into the hills, where he can plant his attic-nurtured marijuana seedlings far from prying eyes. Up in the woods he sets to work "with a pleasure no other task had matched, spacing the pots zigzag so they would look natural, like weeds, if someone did happen by, seduced, like him, by the light of a clearing."
The ice slowly melts, the sun bakes the earth, and Innis's seedlings flourish. He's also drawn into the community of old, Gaelic-speaking families, whose language and way of life may be melting with the snow, but whose sense of place gives them an inner knowledge no outsider could learn. Yet the forces of love and trust--as personified by his uncle's pretty, frivolous mistress, Claire--ultimately deal out devastation to the hero and those around him. Cape Breton Road has more than its share of suspense and erotic electricity. At the same time, however, it's an elegy to a fading way of life, and a portrait of landscape where nature is so fiercely uncompromising that it takes on a spectral, sinister force of its own. --Carey Green --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Thirteen years after the publication of his 1988 Pushcart Prize-winning short story collection, Eyestone, MacDonald's fiction is still shaped by the rugged landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In his debut novel, the drama again unfolds against the unforgiving geography of Canada's East Coast. When his penchant for stealing cars catches up with him in Boston, 20-year-old Canadian Innis Corbett is duly shipped back to Nova Scotia to live with his surly Uncle Starr. His uncle's remote Cape Breton farm is perched on the edge of a small community where everybody knows everyone else's business. Innis, determined to escape, devises a plan to cultivate pot in the attic to fund his next move. Into this unstable household drops Claire, a 40-ish former stewardess fleeing an abusive relationship. As Innis and Claire grow close, Starr's jealousy and suspicions bring tensions between the two men to the boiling point. The story takes several dramatic turns, but more compelling than the plot are the Cape Bretons whom Innis comes to know, a people long on memory and more than a little fey. MacDonald captures their dialect, strength and spirit with powerful clarity. The long gap between the publication of Eyestone and this novel means MacDonald will have to be introduced all over again to most readers, but the novel's terse prose, rich character development and strong themes make it a natural for handselling. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
cheated,
By
This review is from: Cape Breton Road (Paperback)
I gave this book three stars for one reason. It had a very unsatisfactory ending. I felt cheated. The conclusion was not an ending in the real sense.It left several questions unanswered. The most important ones being the fate of the protagonist and his uncle. The author either ran out of interest, or made the beginners error of letting the reader come up with his own ending. The book and characters was so very vivid and beautifully drawn that you could literally breathe the air and atmosphere. Then we are left high and dry. This writer is no amateur. He is brilliant. I loved this book. And because I did, because I cared about the characters, i wish he had done a better job on the conclusion. Still and all, I intend to read his other books. I guess that is the real test.
2.0 out of 5 stars
A real disappointment,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cape Breton Road: A Novel (Hardcover)
Deported to Cape Breton to live with his mean-spirited uncle, Innis might leave his pot-smoking, weed-growing, car-stealing days behind him as he comes to appreciate hard work and simpler ways. But no, he becomes obsessed with his uncle's girlfriend, and there is no redemption for any of them, three losers to the end. Meanwhile, some very interesting characters are left undeveloped. The writing is very good, both in setting the scenes and developing tension, but ultimatly, this is just not a good story and is a slow read. Want to sample Cape Breton life? Try Alister MacLeod's Island
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tragedy worth reading,
By
This review is from: Cape Breton Road: A Novel (Hardcover)
This was a well-written tragedy. I compare it to a Shakespeare tragedy. I didn't like the ending but it wasn't that I didn't like what the author wrote. I kept hoping Innis would make better choices. It was that hope that kept me reading to the end. And, of course, the author's wonderful descriptions of Nova Scotia's people, woods, water, events also kept me reading with great enjoyment. So even though I didn't like the ending, I loved the book.
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