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Publisher:
Little, Brown (Time Warner) |
Release
Date: 5 February 2004 |
ISBN:
0316726176 |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Hardback |
Buy
it at Amazon US
|| UK |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Historical Literary [1870s Western America & Canada]
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Reviewed:
2004 |
Reviewer:
Rachel A Hyde |
Reviewer
Notes: Some violence |
Copyright
MyShelf.com |
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The
Last Crossing
By Guy Vanderhaeghe
What
do you get when you mix a modern western writer like Larry McMurty
with a dash of literary spice? Something very like this large tale
of searching and discovery. Melancholy portrait artist Charles Gaunt
has been dispatched together with his violent, syphilitic brother
Addington to the wilds of the American west by their tough, social
climber of a father. Their quest is to find their other brother,
the strange, childlike Simon who has gone out with snake-oil preacher
Obadiah Witherspoon to bring Christianity to the Native Americans.
They end up traveling with several other companions, including their
scout the half-breed Jerry Potts, beautiful Lucy Stoveall who is
looking for the killers of her beloved sister and Caleb Ayto, a
journalist who wants to write a book about Addington. Bringing up
the rear is Civil War veteran Custis Straw and Irish barkeep Aloysius
Dooley. They will head out into the wilderness to find whatever
they are all looking for, but as they are forced to confront themselves
and their own demons they will all find something, although not
necessarily what they have come to seek.
The main treat here is the author's
skill in describing the Northwest of America and Canada in the early
1870s, a place where anything can happen, and therefore a grand
place for dreaming or facing nightmares. He writes of a world that
is on the brink of vanishing forever, where Indian tribes fight
to save their way of life while the depredations of smallpox and
the evils of whisky forts threaten to kill it off. This is a place
of ghosts, of vast open skies and empty land that seems to go on
forever. The tale is told by several narrators, an excellent plan
a la Wilkie Collins of letting the reader see what makes each character
tick, and of viewing the action through more than one pair of eyes.
However, the book's flaw is the lack of sympathetic characters;
I read the whole book trying desperately to care for them and their
fate and failed miserably, which is a shame. It somehow negated
much of the praiseworthy features and made me wonder if I would
enjoy more work by this author. The thinking person's adventure
story is how I would style it--but lacking in heart.
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