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Product Description
Review
"Through Black Spruce is an arresting novel with unexpected twists and turns. It's also an important contribution to the Native literary voice in this country." --Tomson Highway, author of Kiss of the Fur Queen
Review
"Joseph Boyden achieves a beautiful balance between his characters and nature, between the hardships of contemporary life and their strong connection to the past."
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Most helpful customer reviews
84 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Captivating - master storytelling,
By
This review is from: Through Black Spruce (Hardcover)
In reading "Through Black Spruce", I found myself intrigued as much with author Joseph Boyden's writing style as with the story itself. The book slapped me with some confusion in the first three chapters, as I realized that Boyden was using a double narrative style, and the majority of the book alternated between the primary narrator - bush pilot and Cree native, Will Bird and then the other narrator his niece, Annie Bird. The style is an effective method of telling two separate stories of individuals struggling to find their identities - Will the Uncle straddling his life between the traditional ways of the Cree - living off the land and a today's world which seems to be full of personal problems.I am struck by Will the hard-drinker and endless smoker who also is a jogger, and the hunter who also becomes friends with an old black bear. Annie becomes engaged in two extreme living worlds - one the one hand a tomboy who is a skilled trapper, and on the other hand a short stint in the life of being a supermodel. The two narratives have common touch points, and the reader begins to sense the final convergence early, which unfortunately becomes predictable before the end of the story.
Nevertheless, an excellent book, a learning experience about the Canadian northern region around James Bay and the people who live there.
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life in Two Very Different Worlds,
By Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Through Black Spruce (Hardcover)
This is a complex and colorful tale that deals with the incredible struggles of a First Nations family's attempts to become reconciled after years of living apart and suffering alone. The novel's main setting encompasses the wilds of northern Ontario where a family has grown up learning to survive by living off the land. As they reach adulthood, the pull of the urban south enters their lives and the family draws apart.The story picks up when an uncle and niece eventually reconnect under very strange and tragic circumstances. The uncle, Willie Bird, is in a deep coma and at possibly at death's door because of a serious plane crash while the niece, Annie Bird, has come home from her desperate search for a future in her missing sister in the jungles of the big bad city. The only tangible connection between the two is through a poignantly silent drawing together of their individual stories as inner emotions and hurts pass through their clutching hands at they come together at the uncle's bedside. Guilt is cleansed and the true spiritual essence of who they are as kith and kin emerges. Everything in this novel is a revisiting of the formative events of their respective pasts as the Willie and Annie draw close to each other in a transcending spiritual bond. Boyden is especially effective in mapping out the journey that native people take from their roots in the wilderness to the fleshpots of the big city in search of an ever-elusive identity. As they talk within themselves, the images of a sordid and unhappy past flash up on the big screen of life and disappear. The reader gets to see what really causes extended families like the Birds to be uprooted and then to come together later in life as only a shadow of their former self.The only triumphal part of this novel is the desire of the main characters to work through their problems and recapture something of the essence of family. It is through the retelling of these misadventures that the uncle and niece confront their failings and move on to enjoy each other. I like this book for its ability to both explore and personalize the psychological and spiritual drama of two very separate journeys and unite them under one tent at the end. Happiness for any culture is definitely bound up in the reassuring embraces of family. Boyden offers a very graphic description of the hardships of First Nations people who move outside the reserve and become separated from kin. That alone makes this book worth reading.
36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
beautiful and haunting,
By Alexandra (Alberta, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Through Black Spruce (Hardcover)
I read Three Day Road a couple of years ago and it immediately became one of my favorite books. Since then, I have regularly checked for updates as to when another Boyden novel would be released...
Once again, I've been blown away. A beautiful and haunting book that will stay with you long after the last page. Believable details and the tragic, yet lovable characters made for an intense story. I, honestly, could not put this one down.
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