- Hardcover: 380 pages
- Publisher: Raincoast Books (Aug 31 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1551927195
- ISBN-13: 978-1551927190
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 15 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 703 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #398,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Sointula is a small town in the northern reaches of Vancouver Island, a place seemingly at the end of the world. On a beach near the town, the eccentric, difficult Tommy, son of long-divorced parents, Evelyn and Claude, listens for whales and photographs them day and night. When Claude dies a vagrant's death in a Victoria hospital, Evelyn, settled into a second marriage and respectability in Ontario, decides to take some of his ashes in a cigar tube to Tommy, who she hasn't seen for 10 years and who is unaware of his father's death. Impulsively abandoning her present husband and her normal life, she disposes of her identification and money and paddles out in a stolen kayak to find Tommy. Along the way, she meets a gangly Brit, Peter, who is trying to write a travel book about "nowhere left to go" despite a writer's block as wide as the Pacific. Stumbling into her life, he joins Evelyn in her quest.
It's impossible to write about western British Columbia without the ocean and the rainforest becoming characters. Gaston's descriptions of life on the beaches and seas of Vancouver Island are immediate and alive: the reader can feel and smell the salty, fishy mist. Here Gaston subtly connects the damp lushness of coastal B.C. with Evelyn's own state of mind: "Flip a tide-rock with a foot--the way gelatinous life squirts and shrinks and hides, caught without skin." This novel tells the story of people pushed to the edge, literally and metaphorically, questioning everything about their past and present and seeing at last, like a sudden lifting of the fog, the need for change and redemption. --Mark Frutkin
From Publishers Weekly
A search for the remote island village of Sointula, a "place of harmony" on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, drives Canadian novelist Gaston's latest. Spurred by the death of her first, long-ago lover, Claude, Evelyn Poole, the unhappy wife of the mayor of Oakville, Ontario, flees her husband and their small city to look for her grown son, Tom. She crosses the continent and, fighting hunger and prescription drug withdrawal, undertakes a dangerous, improbable kayak journey to Malcolm's Island, teaming up with drifting retired high school teacher Peter Gore, who is trying unsuccessfully to become a travel writer. Weakened and starved for civilization, Evelyn and Peter begin to lose themselves in the towering wilderness, as Gaston tracks their unreliable impressions. Avoiding cliché or easy nature-worship, Gaston (The Cameraman) is that rare writer who can peel back the deepest fears of Nature (abandonment, pain, futility) and find a vision of vehement, imperfect beauty. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
I'm from Sointula and I loved it,
By Danni (Sointula BC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sointula (Paperback)
I liked the way this book treated the coast and it's characters. I felt the cold and dirt and beauty of the kayak trip. I liked the allusion to Sointula as the utopia at the end of the journey. This book is part fantasy and part reality. Mr. Gaston's writing is a joy to read.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Paddle your own kayak,
By
This review is from: Sointula (Paperback)
If you are a middle aged North American who even grazed the countercultural or had a desire for a prelapsarian Utopia this is a feast of recognition, without being weighed down by nostalgia or enviro-cant. The real beauty of the book is the economical yet sensitive characterization. Bill Gaston gets inside the skin of his characters, evoking fully developed individuals rather than describing them. It's masterful. The book is about passages and connections and real human experience, and as poetic it is, as threatened/bucolic its setting, it is gripping, hard to put down. I really enjoyed it, and it gave me a new respect for Mr. Gaston's range.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews) 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unusually moving,
By Mary Anne - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sointula (Paperback)
The utter bizarre-ness of the characters and their choices makes this book both human and engulfing. The relationships are multi-dimensional and real. The descriptions of nature are satisfying. And the story line keeps you fully involved until the final page. I highly recommend this book!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Journey in Adult Life,
By Allison L. Smith "Fiction Diva" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sointula (Hardcover)
The coastal images are beautiful. Development between mother and son is touching. I would suggest this book Kevin Chong's "Broque-a-Nova" for a truly canadian west coast experience. Thank you for writing such a rich book. I read about 30-40 novels a year and this one is memorable.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
In all fairness I did not finish the book,
By L. Browne "diziner" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sointula (Paperback)
I was very excited to read this book based on other reviews and the short excerpt. I ready about 25% of it and that I had to push through. It was really difficult to develop a true interest in the characters and the plot. The attempted sexual tension became annoying and superfluous. I would definitely be interested in learning more about that area but not by reading this book.
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