- Paperback: 480 pages
- Publisher: Raincoast Books; 1st Edition edition (July 17 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1551925923
- ISBN-13: 978-1551925929
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 590 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #761,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
With no more cod to fish, Bareneed, the setting of Kenneth J. Harvey's powerfully eerie The Town That Forgot How to Breathe, has become another Newfoundland outport village on the wane. As one character laments, "Bareneed, once a lively and warm place, now stank of drabness and heartbreak." It's not much of a magnet for tourists, but it has attracted two visitors for the summer: a fisheries officer and his young daughter. Deeply pained by the recent break-up of his marriage, Joseph fails to notice the more curious aspects of the town. It takes him a while to hear about the townsfolk who've been dropping dead for no apparent reason. He's also slow to realize that his daughter Robin's new playmate is the ghost of a drowned girl. When he and Robin find an "exceptionally ugly" sculpin at the end of their fishing line, Joseph again tries to stay calm. But then he takes a closer look at his catch. "Feeling his fingers turn warm while he tried to disengage the hook," Harvey writes, "Joseph whisked them away. Flesh-coloured fluid seeped from the sculpin's wide mouth. A solid object began edging out as he wiped his fingers on his pants--a flesh-coloured sculpted orb, topped with something that resembled hair, matted in mucousy clumps." The porcelain doll's head that emerges from the fish is one in a series of unsettling sights in Harvey's book. As more and more objects are expelled from the sea, Bareneed's most painful secrets come to the surface.
By setting his story in this desolate Atlantic locale, Harvey seeks to do more than add regional flavour to a Stephen King-style tale of an ordinary community plagued by inexplicable events. Instead, the terrors that Harvey describes are rooted in very real psychological and societal traumas. What makes The Town That Forgot How to Breathe so cunning is the way Harvey uses the horror genre as the basis for a provocative defence of Newfoundland's imperiled cultural traditions. Even though his ornate prose style can sometimes get waterlogged in the scenes between the shocks, Harvey has created a book that is as compelling as it is unique. --Jason Anderson
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This American debut for Canadian novelist Harvey (Directions for an Opened Body) is a genre hybrid boasting impressive literary flair. It's a heartwarming romance: fisheries investigator Joseph Blackwood pines for the wife he adores while vacationing with their daughter, and their passion is rekindled in the midst of tragedy. It's a creepy horror story: menacing sea creatures and the eerily unsullied bodies of long-dead seafarers are bobbing to the surface of the waters around the picturesque Newfoundland fishing community of Bareneed, as the villagers are gripped by a mysterious epidemic that causes its victims to forget how to breathe. It's a subtly didactic political allegory: the intrusion of the outside world—and something about too many radio waves in the air—is eroding the companionable insularity of Bareneed's quirky residents, setting off undercurrents of nightmarish, utterly alien violence. And it's a fascinating regional novel: Harvey, a Newfoundlander himself, captures with his haunting voice the earthiness of an insular culture that's as distinct from the rest of Canada as smalltown Southerners are from the rest of America. Comparisons with Stephen King's commercial power and Annie Proulx's literary warmth are apt but glib. Harvey is an author whose storytelling prowess can speak for itself.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Town That Forgot How To Breathe,
By
This review is from: The Town that Forgot How to Breathe (Paperback)
"The people react against the invading culture or the loss of identity. A mass hypnosis kicks in, one that everybody believes because they have to, in order to survive. Mentally, I mean. Survive beyond what has been taken away from them."Ken Harvey's The Town That Forgot How To Breathe is an exciting and fast-paced novel that portrays what can happen to people when they lose their identity. The connection between breathing and identity is wonderful, and Ken's story-telling abilities are finely tuned. Set in an isolated village in Newfoundland, Ken brilliantly unravels a moving tale of a community enduring inexplicable events that challenge their physical and psychological survival. Other commentaries sometimes make comparisons to Stephen King, but in my opinion Ken's work is far more thought provoking and engaging. Ken Harvey has a unique voice that draws the reader into the interior of the narrative. This is a highly creative and intelligent novel.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting!,
By Victoria Taylor Murray "Book Maven" (Kentucky, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Town that Forgot How to Breathe (Paperback)
Town That Forgot How To Breathe by talented Canadian writer Kenneth J. Harvey is an interesting book I had trouble putting down after I began reading it. It is a well-written book with well-crafted characters and and intriguing dialogue that kept my interest from start to finish. It is a book I am happy to suggest!
5.0 out of 5 stars
KEPT ME BREATHLESS,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (Paperback)
Art Matters: The Art of Knowledge/The Knowledge of ArtNatural Law, Science, and the Social Construction of Reality I recently discovered Ken Harvey and am trying to make up for lost time. This book can be read in a number of ways, as other reviews show. It is horror story, and old fashioned ghost story, a moral parable, a story about how technology is destroying what makes us human, a story about the revenge of nature, and a story about what it means to be one's self. There are actually two stories going on that overlap. Doug Blackwood and his daughter Robin leave St John's for a holiday and go to a small fishing village on the coast. The village is depressed due to the closing of the Cod fishery and the processing plant. When the troubles arise, which affect Robin, he calls his ex-wife Kim, who also comes to town. They all get caught up in the events. There is a ghost girl in the house across from where Robert and Robin are staying. The ghost wants Robin as a permanent playmate, and, when Robin has real medical problems, they are, of course, complicated by the ghost issues. Meanwhile, Tommy, who had been born stillborn but came to life but had brain damage draws pictures of things to come. And Old Miss Laracy keeps people grounded with her tales and ability to see spirits. When all kinds of old drowned people appear it is Miss Laracy who can identify them. The dead people are all related to the people in the town who develop an inability to breathe. And with the loss of breathe comes a loss of identity. People dig up old records and determine that something like this happened 70 years before, just when all kinds of electrical communications were being used. In all a complex read that works on many levels, especially with regard to the identity of both the people and the places of the Newfoundland Outports.
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