- Paperback: 300 pages
- Publisher: Cormorant Books Inc (Feb 1 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1896951813
- ISBN-13: 978-1896951812
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 14.2 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #233,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Quill & Quire
June Hutton’s Underground follows Canadian Al Fraser from his time as a 16-year-old boy soldier in the First World War, through labour jobs and work camps during the Great Depression, to a final combat stint in the Spanish Civil War. Al’s story begins with an explosion on the front, rendered in exquisite detail, which results in his body being saturated with sand and shrapnel, the latter gradually floating to the surface of his skin, emerging piece by piece over the course of his life. Hutton lavishes careful attention on the physical details of Al’s interactions with earth in a motif connecting the physical underground with the subconscious and death. Al is constantly descending beneath the surface of the world: mining, digging roads, and hiding in subterranean passages. Inverting this motif, his memories of war arise like the shrapnel beneath his skin. Despite the pains Hutton takes to visualize Al’s odyssey – for instance, taking a full page to show him bringing buckets of snow inside – the reader is unable to perceive the effects of the physical environment on the book’s characters, so the careful detail neither affects nor advances the story. Al’s motives for travelling from one place to another are left entirely unexplained, as is the assistance he receives from a series of secondary characters. While Hutton may intend to dramatize a kind of aimless fatalism on Al’s part, the result is a confusing chronology, with no explanation as to the motives or means of the protagonist’s peregrinations. Al’s relationships are equally opaque. The emotional history and behavioural tics of his family, fellow soldiers, co-workers, and friends is insufficient to present their interactions clearly or effectively. An excellent example of this problem is the alacrity with which Al’s three romantic interests, without any obvious motivation, prelude, or even conversation, leap into sexual relations with him. Most of the flat dialogue has the same failing: it provides neither motivation nor illumination. Had Hutton developed the characters, relationships, and plot in her book as fully as she does the attentive visual detail and Freudian themes, the novel could have proved insightful and affecting. As it is, the reader is left puzzling over why, and how, anything in the story happened at all.
Review
Hutton’s prose is taut and lean, elegant and poetic ... Its exploration of a man’s creative defiance and ability to embrace his own imperfect life plumbs the intrinsic qualities of art, poetry, human geography, chance and love. --The Globe and Mail, April 10, 2009
Underground . . . is brilliantly conceived, totally convincing and a kin to the works of an early Steinbeck. --The Owen Sound Sun Times, May 15, 2009
"Throughout the book, bits of shrapnel emerge from [Al's] skin. It's a wonderful metaphor for all those things that emerge from our consciousness and unconscious," Hal Wake [artisitic director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival] said. --The Vancouver Sun, October 24, 2009
"The story didn't lose its track, and Hutton's poetic writing never lost its appeal throughout." --The Whitehorse Star, May 27, 2009
". . . visceral, sensual language . . . a compelling protagonist readers will find it easy to identify with." --The Vancouver Sun, May 2, 2009
"This is rhythmic, taut writing, at once sensual and alive with potential violence." --Literary Review of Canada, November 2009
"As Al slowly progresses from youth to manhood he quietly insinuated himself into my mind, making him a memorable character." --Event, The Douglas College Review, Fall 2009
". . . Hutton creates a cinematic and moving portayal of the life of her protagonist, Albert Fraser." --British Columbia History, Journal of the BC Historical Federation, Vol. 42, No. 3
Al's story begins with an explosion on the front, rendered in exquisite detail, which results in his body being saturated with sand and shrapnel, the latter gradually floating to the surface of his skin, emerging piece by piece over the course of his life. Hutton lavishes careful attention on the physical details of Al's interactions with earth in a motif connecting the physical underground with the subconscious and death. Al is constantly descending beneath the surface of the world: mining, digging roads, and hiding in subterranean passages. Inverting this motif, his memories of war arise like the shrapnel beneath his skin. --Quill & Quire May 2009
Underground . . . is brilliantly conceived, totally convincing and a kin to the works of an early Steinbeck. --The Owen Sound Sun Times, May 15, 2009
"Throughout the book, bits of shrapnel emerge from [Al's] skin. It's a wonderful metaphor for all those things that emerge from our consciousness and unconscious," Hal Wake [artisitic director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival] said. --The Vancouver Sun, October 24, 2009
"The story didn't lose its track, and Hutton's poetic writing never lost its appeal throughout." --The Whitehorse Star, May 27, 2009
". . . visceral, sensual language . . . a compelling protagonist readers will find it easy to identify with." --The Vancouver Sun, May 2, 2009
"This is rhythmic, taut writing, at once sensual and alive with potential violence." --Literary Review of Canada, November 2009
"As Al slowly progresses from youth to manhood he quietly insinuated himself into my mind, making him a memorable character." --Event, The Douglas College Review, Fall 2009
". . . Hutton creates a cinematic and moving portayal of the life of her protagonist, Albert Fraser." --British Columbia History, Journal of the BC Historical Federation, Vol. 42, No. 3
Al's story begins with an explosion on the front, rendered in exquisite detail, which results in his body being saturated with sand and shrapnel, the latter gradually floating to the surface of his skin, emerging piece by piece over the course of his life. Hutton lavishes careful attention on the physical details of Al's interactions with earth in a motif connecting the physical underground with the subconscious and death. Al is constantly descending beneath the surface of the world: mining, digging roads, and hiding in subterranean passages. Inverting this motif, his memories of war arise like the shrapnel beneath his skin. --Quill & Quire May 2009
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Finding your own identity in a world gone mad,
By Questor "book maven" (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Underground (Paperback)
A lyrical, moving story about finding your place in a crazy world. Fraser is chronologically a young man after the First World War, but doesn't really become one until he joins the Spanish Civil War 20 years later. As the world turns upside down in the interim, he gains personal understanding. Large and sweeping, this novel acts as a metaphor for anyone trying to establish themselves as an individual amidst the ever-present madness around them. [...].
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
emotional and heart-wrenching,
By Antiole "Antiole" (Toronto) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Underground (Paperback)
I just read Underground. It was emotional and heart-wrenchingly beautiful, with a lyricism that just carried me away, far beneath at times, to places I didn't want to go. But I'm glad I went.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetic and Gritty Must-read,
By Crested Myna "Poet" (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Underground (Paperback)
This beautifully written first novel from June Hutton is a must-read for lovers of historical fiction. Hutton's lean prose propels the action from the mud-filled trenches of the Somme to the desperation of Depression-era work camps to the bombed-blasted landscape of the Spanish Civil War. Protagonist Al Fraser is an everyman in no man's land struggling for identity and dignity, and Hutton tells his story with respect and grace. She is a writer to watch.
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