FAR NORTH by Marcel Theroux
Book Quote:
“My father used to say he decided to leave America when he noticed that the poor had all begun to look alike.
He didn’t mean their faces, and he didn’t mean only the poor of the United States. He meant poor people everywhere.â€
Book Review:
Review by Lynn Harnett (OCT 22, 2009)
The narrator of Theroux’s post-apocalyptic novel, Makepeace Hatfield (who lives up to the name), is the last survivor of an immigrant Siberian community – a place Makepeace’s British parents had come to to escape the material world. But the rescue of a starving waif awakens her longing for companionship, love and civilization, spurring the road trip that drives the novel.
Theroux’s vast, harsh landscape complements Makepeace’s lonely, hardscrabble, survivor’s life, and elements of stark beauty parallel human vulnerability and hope. The journey in search of others shares some elements with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and will attract the same readers. It’s a page turner of a road novel without a lot of faith in human altruism, but with plenty invested in communal ingenuity and individual resourcefulness.
Makepeace, disillusioned and battered, has a deep inner resilience that relies on heart for its strength. Theroux shapes Makepeace’s character in language that illuminates the relationship between what we tell ourselves and what actually is and the hope that bridges the gap.
Editor’s note: Far North has recently been selected as a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. A surprising nomination given that the book is set in Siberia (but “written in American idiom” and  the author  was born in Kampala, Uganda, and now lives in London. To qualify for this “American” book award, the author must have an American citizenship, which one assumes he does, since he is the son of the American writer Paul Theroux. (See more on the other selections for this year’s finalists in this interesting The New York Times article.) And see below for the other four books selected as finalists for this award.
| AMAZON READER RATING: |  from 4 readers |
| PUBLISHER: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 9, 2009) |
| REVIEWER: | Lynn Harnett |
| AMAZON PAGE: | Far North |
| AUTHOR WEBSITE: | Wikipedia page on Marcel Theroux |
| EXTRAS: | Excerpt (scroll down) |
| MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: | More post-apocalypse novels:
O-Zone by Paul Theroux Our American King by David Lozell Snakeskin Road by James Braziel Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood The Pesthouse by Jim Crace The Road by Cormac McCarthy Other 2009 National Book Award Finalists: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann In Other World, Other Wonders by Daniel Mueenuddin Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips We have not yet reviewed American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell |
Bibliography:
- A Stranger in the Earth 1997)
- The Confession of Mycroft Holmes (2000)
- The Paperchase (2002)
- A Blow to the Heart (2006)
- Far North (June 2009)
October 22, 2009
Tags: 2009 NBA Finalist, Apocolypse, road novel, scifi Posted in: 2009 NBA Finalist, Literary, Russia, Speculative (Beyond Reality), World Literature
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