Monkey Beach
by Eden Robinson | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0349107912 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0349107912 Global Overview for this book
3 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by disneyfreaksam from Warminster, Wiltshire United Kingdom on Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Growing up a tough wild tomboy, swimming, fighting and fishing in the remote Native village of Kitamaat, where the land slips into the green ocean on the northern edge of the world and strange things bubble below the surface. LisaMarie has always been different. Visited by ghosts and shapeshifters, tormented by premonitions, she can't escape the sense that something terrible is waiting for her at the end of the line. Then one day her little brother Jimmy goes missing at sea, and as LisaMarie sits waiting for news, aged nineteen but feeling a hundred, she sorts through the blackest secrets of her damaged life, in search of hope.
Journal Entry 2 by disneyfreaksam at Warminster, Wiltshire United Kingdom on Saturday, March 13, 2021
Enjoy this amazing book
Arrived safely today. Thank you for sharing this wishlist book with me.
This was a captivating read, though I felt the narrative grew less cohesive toward the end. I can't decide if that was intentional on the author's part. There is a fluidity throughout, where reality and myth (supernatural sensitivity? mental illness? native stuff that outsiders just can't understand?) coincide, and even the protagonist, Lisa, isn't sure what is real at times, but certain details toward the end are thrown in without any context of how she would know, or framing as speculation. It's as if the author wanted to be sure something was explained, but never went back to fix the omniscient point-of-view. Then there is the sentence, "Erica had graduated on time, had her baby, and her boyfriend was trying to convince her to move to Esquimalt, where he would be stationed while he was training to be a naval officer," that is repeated verbatim a half page apart that sways me toward thinking that the messiness toward the end was not planned to indicate the growing ambiguity in Lisa's life, but the author growing weary of figuring out how to wrap things up.
Despite the shortcomings, one of the best things I've read this year. Hope she writes more novels and gets a stronger editor.
This was a captivating read, though I felt the narrative grew less cohesive toward the end. I can't decide if that was intentional on the author's part. There is a fluidity throughout, where reality and myth (supernatural sensitivity? mental illness? native stuff that outsiders just can't understand?) coincide, and even the protagonist, Lisa, isn't sure what is real at times, but certain details toward the end are thrown in without any context of how she would know, or framing as speculation. It's as if the author wanted to be sure something was explained, but never went back to fix the omniscient point-of-view. Then there is the sentence, "Erica had graduated on time, had her baby, and her boyfriend was trying to convince her to move to Esquimalt, where he would be stationed while he was training to be a naval officer," that is repeated verbatim a half page apart that sways me toward thinking that the messiness toward the end was not planned to indicate the growing ambiguity in Lisa's life, but the author growing weary of figuring out how to wrap things up.
Despite the shortcomings, one of the best things I've read this year. Hope she writes more novels and gets a stronger editor.
To starlahazelnut, media mail 07/10/21.
Yay! This was fast, just recieved this book today! Thank you so much, as soon as I am done with my other two books that I am reading I will get on it.
