Books in Canada
Strangely, this is the second book dealing with people canoeing down a river in the arctic. Only this time they are peripheral characters, a couple, who also come to a bad end. The husband is drowned, the canoe and supplies lost, but the woman survives, and is rescued by a young Inuit. However, in the surreal world of the modern arctic, some young Inuit girls form a cult which worships the white woman's toque. Many other complications arise when the woman's twin sister comes to the village, and it is wrongly assumed that she is a spirit who has split in two. This is just one of the surreal events in this delightful novel, where past and present, fantasy and fiction, myth and reality all mix. In a small arctic village, the political ins and outs differ little from those of more populated areas. There is an Inuit despot with a severe thirst for Canadian Club. There are incompetent and overwhelmed government officials, plans for self-government that may well depose the despotic leader, and indifferent natives who regard the white men with humorous disdain. Snowmobiles and the Inuit spirit world blend in a comic-horror scenario. The book is described as capturing the heart and soul of the modern Inuit village, and indeed it does, warts and all.
W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)
Product Description
The year is 1982 in Lawrence Osgood's Midnight Sun and the isolated village of Poniktuk (population 156) exists by and for itself in the central Arctic, virtually undisturbed by intrusions of the outside world. Free of television, telephones and other modern conveniences, the only real communications come to the village by the almost weekly mail delivered by the "sched," the scheduled flight that originates in Inuvik and touches down at other villages on its way to Poniktuk. The quiet little village becomes troubled when a white man steps off the sched and stirs up talks of land rights with Simon Umingmak, long-time chairman of the Poniktuk settlement council. Tensions rise as Simon and his 18-year-old nephew, Nate, square off on the delicate issue. When a white woman, the lone survivor of wilderness canoe trip, is rescued by the head of the Hunters' Association and brought to Poniktuk, a teenage girl, fascinated by the stranger, nearly dead from hunger and exposure, starts a cult around her striped tuque. Then, Aningan, the spirit of the moon, intervenes unexpectedly, a herd of caribou surrounds the village, and Sedna, the spirit under the sea, returns to the world where she left it. In one long bright night, spirits and humans collide with horrific consequences. An intense portrait of Inuit life intertwined with the rich mystical folklore of the north, Midnight Sun is a powerful first novel by Lawrence Osgood. An original work of fiction by a writer steeped in the mystical culture of the north, Midnight Sun is one of the first works of Canadian fiction to examine and encompass the Arctic's three crucial elements: the landscape, its people and their legends, an enthralling combination sure to thrill and captivate literary fiction and fantasy fans alike.
