The Snow Walker

Rating:
Summary: A northern light.
Review: Canada's poet-biologist-sociologist, Farley Mowat, is the almost invisible traveler in this journey across the snow swept northern barrens. He illuminates a place which most of us will never know. From its land forms to its creatures to the lives and thoughts of its native peoples. An engrossing collection of storytelling that could only be the product of the writers intimacy with place.
Says Mowat, "The northern people are happy when snow lies heavy on the land. They welcome the first snow in autumn, and often regret its passing in the spring. Snow is their friend. Without it they would have perished or -- almost worse from their point of view -- they would long since have been driven south to join us in our frenetic rush to wherever it is that we are bound."

Rating:
Summary: Great Winter's Reading
Review: I loved this book as much as any that I've ever read.I'm not sure where Mr.Mowat found his ideas for these stories,but it sure seems like they are 'true myths' of the North that he has discov- ered through talking to Arctic/Nordic inhabitants. All of these tales are deeply inspiring,and terrific reads.Especially if,like myself,you enjoyed the Jack London Northern Tales.I highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciates stories about men and animals overcoming tremen- dous obstacles to survive in 'their' climate.

Rating:
Summary: Not Mowat's best book
Review: I'm a big fan of Farley Mowat, but this is not a book that I would rank among his best. I just couldn't get into it, although some of the stories were entertaining. Nagging questions about the manner in which he may have embellished the stories dogged me throughout.

Rating:
Summary: Not Mowat's best book
Review: I'm a big fan of Farley Mowat, but this is not a book that I would rank among his best. I just couldn't get into it, although some of the stories were entertaining. Nagging questions about the manner in which he may have embellished the stories dogged me throughout.

Rating:
Summary: Well crafted prose from a versatile writer
Review: This collection of short stories by the Canadian writer Farley Mowat, is outstanding proof of his versatility. Although many of his best books are almost unplanned, coming to fruition after some sort of initial spontaneous combustion (I'm thinking of "People of the Deer" especially), the fictional elements in "The Snow Walker" indicate a methodical mind capable of forming well crafted prose. All these stories take place in the Arctic, or have to do with it. Many are based on people Mowat met on his travels or heard about from others. They contain the grains of ideas and don't attempt to do more than expand that one notion, as I think short stories should. Hence the stories are focussed and the issue at hand is brought into sharp relief, sometimes in only a few pages. Like a number of Mowat's works, this one has been used in schools for many years, and deservedly so, as it is some of the best Canadian short fiction of its kind (i.e., about the Arctic).