- Paperback: 284 pages
- Publisher: Raincoast Books; 1st Edition edition (July 19 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1551927837
- ISBN-13: 978-1551927831
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 12.7 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 136 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #311,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Blue-eyed, blonde, and young, Ellen works in an art gallery in Toronto and wants a baby. Adam, her adventurous boyfriend, doesn't. In a few spare pages, Pick limns the storyline in this tightly woven, fast-paced first novel. The relationship between Ellen and Adam is on the edge, and when Adam sleeps with his old friend, Cara, it suddenly slides over that edge. Adam and Ellen try to work things out by separating for the summer. He heads for a grueling seven-week canoe trip alone in the Yukon while Ellen stays home and begins to break out of her cocoon by making friends with a sociable and welcoming group of Buddhist lesbians. The story shifts quickly back and forth in time, lending complexity to a simple tale about the difficulties of young love.
Pick writes with authority: "Words are useless, she thinks. Words are a breath expelled, the part of the body that rises and disappears." Adam's difficult journey is the high point of the book, and the northern bush country is especially well depicted, with its lack of trees and its icy lakes, the wilderness that is "essentially unknowable." When Adam loses his way (echoing the relationship), the story turns into a thrilling struggle between one insignificant man and the overwhelming power of nature. Less successful are the author's attempts to describe in complex detail the contemporary art installations at the gallery where Ellen works. The characters throughout are readily imagined and the story skilfully told. In the end, Ellen and Adam both learn their lessons in different ways, finding that "wilderness is ... the core of everything." --Mark Frutkin
From Publishers Weekly
Canadian poet Pick's first novel preciously ponders the travails of a young couple as they figure out who they are and if they want (or, indeed, need) each other. Switching perspectives between art gallery gopher Ellen and brooding grad student Adam, Pick zeroes in on the deceptions and mutual disappointments that dog the pair as Ellen, desperate to hold on to Adam, follows him from Kingston, Ontario, to Toronto, even as she suspects he has been unfaithful to her. He has, of course, which makes her cling to him even more; her fear of abandonment trumps pride. Adam, intent on disentangling himself from Ellen, goes on a two-month soul-searching trip to the Canadian wilderness. While he is away, Ellen begins to see herself as an independent entity and finds herself surrounded by a supportive group of new friends. Adam, meanwhile, battles memories and Arctic hardships he isn't sure he will be able to survive. Pick infuses the novel with shining metaphors, which add a welcome luster to an otherwise stale plot. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Diligent Attempt,
By Reader and Writer "Chris" (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Sweet Edge (Paperback)
Deliverance meets self searching and the end of a relationship in this first attempt at writing a novel. We must give leeway and applaud the effort of putting so many words in order. The plot is less than gripping, however. Boy goes on canoe trip, breaks ankle, surprise surprise. Girl works at a gallery and tries to find herself now that the relationship is over, maybe. Motivations get muddled and cardboard characters do their best to escape their cut out forms. Why is it worth reading then? Well the story is easily ingested in an hour or two, there are no linguistic fireworks or brilliance to slow the read, it flows to a conclusion that is altogether expected.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Characters won me over,
By
This review is from: The Sweet Edge (Paperback)
Alison Pick's The Sweet Edge is a short and spare novel about a twentysomething couple, Ellen and Adam, whose relationship has gone awry after three years together. They spend the summer apart, Ellen working at a boring job in a city she doesn't like and Adam taking a long-dreamed-of canoe trip alone into the Canadian North.That summary pretty much tells you what's annoying about these characters, neither of whom I liked much at the beginning of the novel. Adam is the poster boy for Self-Absorbed Jerks Afraid of Committment, while Ellen is typical of the kind of woman I meet so often in novels and so rarely in real life: passive, indecisive, a bystander in her own life. Things change during the novel, however. Adam's trip up North is the classic man-against-the-wilderness-finding-yourself journey, but there are twists he hasn't forseen: the trip forces him to confront his own weakness and his need for other people. Meanwhile, Ellen goes on her own journey of self-discovery without ever leaving Toronto, though she does travel around it quite a bit. Her voyage is made not in solitude but in community; the group of new friends who help Ellen "find herself" are among the most engaging characters in the book. Starting out by disliking the major characters is not usually a good sign for a book but by the end of The Sweet Edge I found myself caring about Ellen and Adam in spite of their flaws. I was interested to see how Pick would end the novel and I wasn't disappointed (though a bit frustrated by a detail that, in a very postmodern way, is left hanging at the end). The language is one of the delights of The Sweet Edge. I'm not always keen on novels by poets (Pick is best-known as a poet and recent winner of the prestigious CBC literary award for poetry) because too often the language takes centre stage, leaving plot and characters to fend for themselves. Here, however, Pick's subtly elegant prose is always used in the service of the story, so that you never forget you're reading a novel -- a very well-written novel, but not one that screams, "Look at my prose! How lovely it is!" Rather, we're drawn to look through the clear window of Pick's prose into the lives of two people who are flawed and fallible, but who are also able to change.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and Gripping,
By J.E. (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Sweet Edge (Paperback)
The kind of book you want to savour, delicious page after delicious page. Beautiful and clever imagery aside, I also found it somewhat of a page-turner by the end and couldn't stop thinking about the characters for days after I consumed the book...
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