- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Random House Canada; 1st printing edition (Sep 12 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679314377
- ISBN-13: 978-0679314370
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.5 x 4.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 363 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #308,813 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this powerful first novel, a beautiful Inuit woman spends her teen years in the 1960s in a Montreal TB sanitarium, learning French and mathematics from nuns. Upon returning to her Hudson Bay hamlet to live in a government-made dwelling, Victoria feels like a stranger living in a kind of internal exile and shudders at the taste of half-rotted walrus meat. After getting pregnant by a Kablunauk (Inuktitut for white person), she marries him. Husband Robertson's ambition rankles the community to begin with, and when he accepts work from a South African mining company that wants to dig for diamonds in the frozen tundra, things come to a boiling point. Keith Balthazar, a doctor who comes to the community from New York, tends to Victoria's children in illness and gets unexpectedly entwined in the family's life. In language that is always sharp and sometimes mesmerizing, Patterson, author of a story collection and the memoir The Water in Between, seamlessly works murder, sex and intrigue into the mix and offers a terrific cast that makes arctic life, and the ties of kin, palpable. He delivers a searingly visceral message about love, loss and dislocation. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Review
“It's this thematic resonance, along with an understated humanism reminiscent of Anton Chekhov (incidentally, another physician), that makes Consumption a quietly devastating novel.”
–The Vancouver Sun
“Some first novels simply tower above their contemporaries by the scope of their ambition and the power of their vision. Last year, it was Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road; earlier this year it was Madeleine Thien’s Certainty, and now it’s Kevin Patterson’s Consumption.”
–The Globe and Mail
“On the surface, Consumption is deceptively simple and gripping. It's the story of one woman and her family. But what a woman -- and what a family!”
–The Globe and Mail
“Patterson has seen and done much where two or more world views intersect. It makes him a peculiarly well-informed and insightful guide to the conflicts within the coastal Inuit community of Rankin Inlet in the Canadian Arctic, the primary setting of Consumption…”
–The Globe and Mail
“the people in Kevin Patterson's gripping new novel of the North, Consumption, are defiantly human. They are complicated, passionate, troubled, confused and, in some cases, doomed -- by disease, by their own failings and by those of their loves ones and by economic and cultural forces beyond their control.”
–The Winnipeg Free Press
“Consumption launches a major voice in Canadian fiction”
–The Winnipeg Free Press
Praise for Country of Cold:
“[Patterson] . . . has made the leap to fiction with startling grace”
–The Georgia Straight
“A masterful debut short-story collection. . . . The stories are rich in event . . . but it’s in characterizations that Patterson shines, capturing shades of ambiguity, uncertainty and small happiness with a deft touch.”
–The Vancouver Sun
“Country of Cold is a terrific book. Kevin Patterson writes frequently about misfits and loners, but he presents them with such hard-edged clarity and insight that it’s impossible not to think of these people as kin. And whether it’s slapstick hilarity in a prairie Dairy Queen or the dead-serious menace of a winter storm north of the treeline, the writing is always pitch perfect.”
–Michael Crummey, author of River Thieves and The Wreckage
–The Vancouver Sun
“Some first novels simply tower above their contemporaries by the scope of their ambition and the power of their vision. Last year, it was Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road; earlier this year it was Madeleine Thien’s Certainty, and now it’s Kevin Patterson’s Consumption.”
–The Globe and Mail
“On the surface, Consumption is deceptively simple and gripping. It's the story of one woman and her family. But what a woman -- and what a family!”
–The Globe and Mail
“Patterson has seen and done much where two or more world views intersect. It makes him a peculiarly well-informed and insightful guide to the conflicts within the coastal Inuit community of Rankin Inlet in the Canadian Arctic, the primary setting of Consumption…”
–The Globe and Mail
“the people in Kevin Patterson's gripping new novel of the North, Consumption, are defiantly human. They are complicated, passionate, troubled, confused and, in some cases, doomed -- by disease, by their own failings and by those of their loves ones and by economic and cultural forces beyond their control.”
–The Winnipeg Free Press
“Consumption launches a major voice in Canadian fiction”
–The Winnipeg Free Press
Praise for Country of Cold:
“[Patterson] . . . has made the leap to fiction with startling grace”
–The Georgia Straight
“A masterful debut short-story collection. . . . The stories are rich in event . . . but it’s in characterizations that Patterson shines, capturing shades of ambiguity, uncertainty and small happiness with a deft touch.”
–The Vancouver Sun
“Country of Cold is a terrific book. Kevin Patterson writes frequently about misfits and loners, but he presents them with such hard-edged clarity and insight that it’s impossible not to think of these people as kin. And whether it’s slapstick hilarity in a prairie Dairy Queen or the dead-serious menace of a winter storm north of the treeline, the writing is always pitch perfect.”
–Michael Crummey, author of River Thieves and The Wreckage
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dr. Patterson, thank you again!,
By
This review is from: Consumption (Hardcover)
This is a superb read! This is an unmistakably Canadian experience (interestingly with a few reflective American personages). The characters are rich, the landscape is vast, the relationships are moving, and the consumption is raw. For days after I finished the book, I marvelled at how well this piece was delivered. As a Canadian, I feel I have gained slightly more insight into the mysterious North (and more importantly a longing to learn more).As a physician, I must say one appreciates the sublime but authentic descriptions that span the novel. Of course, the essays in the final section - almost a black-and-white version of the novel - are some of the best I have read. With his abilities, sensibilities and experiences he offers a unique and accurate description of the major health issues of our time. Dr. Patterson is fondly remembered by those that knew him during his training days here in Halifax. No doubt, he will be appreciated by a great many more for his growing contribution to Canadian literature.
4.0 out of 5 stars
northern mystique and harsh reality,
By
This review is from: Consumption (Paperback)
Highly recommended, this novel is fascinating and really gives the reader a sense of both the myth and the reality of living in the far north. Tragic and beautiful, both sad and hopeful - the novel explores the contradictions and extremes of life in the north. I enjoyed it for the powerful descriptions of landscape and character, the historical background, and the medical insights, each of which serve to tell a compelling story.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews) 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent read, completely engrossing.,
By K. A. Tappe "Incurable Book Worm" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Consumption: A novel (Hardcover)
This is probably the best book I read in 2007. It follows a woman of the Inuit tribes in northern Canada as she is treated for consumption (TB) as a child, brought to live among white Canadians, and then re-incorporated back into a changing Inuit landscape that is absorbing more and more white culture. The author tells the story from several points of view, the most interesting of which is a physician who provides a narrative history of consumption/tuberculosis. I learned a lot from those sections, as well as generally from the book about the Inuit and the travails of living in the Arctic circle.The only reason I did not give this 5 stars is because there is a plot line regarding a murder that I felt stuck out from the rest of the narrative in an uncomfortable way. I also got the sense the book was not quite sure how to finish itself. Otherwise, it was a book that was difficult to put down with very interesting and complex character development. Of particular note is how each character is depicted neither as all good or all bad (a trap that many writers fall into). Instead, each character is presented with a depth that includes both positive and negative aspects, so that ultimately we feel for these characters is the same way that we might feel for people in our real lives. 15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Could be the best work of fiction in 2007.,
By Rocco B. Rubino "Rocco R." - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Consumption: A novel (Hardcover)
Consumption deals with the little known world of the Inuit people. Like our Amish here in America, the Inuit live a separated life; in ways,customs,dress,speech, and food.The story centers around the sensual and worldy-wise, some might say cynical, Victoria Robertson, a native Inuit who becomes pregnant with a white man's child and later marries him. Earlier in life, Victoria is severed from her Inuit world when she is ravaged by TB. Her parents send her to the city to be cared for by a religious order where she receives her elementary education and learns English, and she becomes close to a white family. When she is eventually reunited with her Inuit family, she shudders at the thought of seal meat. In time, she is hanging around town, and when diamonds are discovered and a mine is being constructed, an engineer is frequenting the stores. She hungers for knowledge of the outside world and soon strikes up a friendship with the much-older Robertson, who eventually impregnates her, then marries her. At the risk of revealing too much of the story, this book dwells heavily on the implications of what happens when cultures collide, when civilizatinos clash, when the old cannot be reconciled with the new; the results are complicated. There are a number of side plots and sub plots. The author is to be commended for not tying everything up into one neat tidy little package at the end of the book, but rather he leaves many questions unanswered. Consumption is as fine a work of fiction as I have read in a long time. There are the great existential themes that will have you putting the book down and looking out the window and pondering on life. It is a haunting work that borders on cynicism. It is, however, a tale of the tenderness, and weakness that is the human condition. 9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best I've read this year!,
By weekly reader - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Consumption: A novel (Hardcover)
I have never written a review but I am surprised this book is not getting more attention. I read quite a few books every week and this one was exceptional. The majority of the book takes place in the Artic, a place where most of us will never visit and it has a wealth of information on the Inuit culture and history, past and present. Its story deals with universal themes of loss, adaptation to change, loneliness and isolation, and families struggling at all stages of their lives. Like life, this book takes you through every emotion. It also includes the lives of those who are not Inuit.
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