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Summary: EXTREMITIES AS DEFINING FORCES...
Review: Extremities define - they map out the boundaries of continents and nations, of worlds, and of our bodies. There are several extremities at work in Kathryn Harrison's novel - and the unforgiving Alaskan weather is one of them. The central character, a meteorologist named Bigelow, is sent to Anchorage in 1915 in order to begin recording weather data for the US government. He is at first excited by the prospect - both by its frontier location and by his potentially pioneering work - but he soon falls prey to forces beyond his control, both in his heart and in his physical environment.Bigelow finds himself both physically and emotionally hammered by the isolation enforced upon him by his surroundings. He thinks he is prepared for the time-toppling 20-hour winter nights and the seemingly endless days of the summer months - he soon finds that he is sinking deeper and deeper into loneliness. He finds a bit of solace in the company of a native woman - known simply as the Aleut woman, her name never being revealed to either the reader or Bigelow - and he becomes more and more obsessed with her silence. She never speaks a word to him - the only noises he ever hears from her are her quiet moans during sex. Rather than being driven away by this, he is drawn more and more to her because of it. When she suddenly disappears - without an explanation of where she's going or when or if she'll return - his life is thrown into chaos. He soon finds another woman with whom he becomes infatuated - she sings, accompanying the silent films that are shown periodically in a tent, projected onto a sheet. She is as mysterious as the Aleut woman - it takes quite a bit of detective work on Bigelow's part for him to discover her name and where she lives. When he does manage to meet her, he is struck by a strange parallel to the Aleut woman - this girl is also silent, except for her songs. She communicates with him by way of a pencil and paper, and lets him know that she can't speak - she can sing, but only the words written by others. She cannot even use song to communicate her own thoughts. ... I think that Harrison has endowed both of them with a lot of character and, in their own ways, a lot of things to say. This is particularly true of the Aleut woman - for a character that never utters a word (none of her thoughts are ever presented, either), this reader came away with a deep sense of her personality. She is a uniquely strong character - she lives her life as she chooses, and no one (especially Bigelow) is going to dictate what she should or shouldn't do. The method he finally finds of communicating with her, of touching her on a deeper level, is a memorable one - I'll leave it for the potential reader to discover what that is. Bigelow himself is a less-than-admirable character, albeit a sympathetic one - meaning that I didn't necessarily like him as a person, or approve of his methods of dealing with those around him, but that I could understand how extenuating circumstances (as well as what was revealed of his upbringing) had formed him into the person depicted here on these pages. Overall, I found the book to be compelling and entertaining - and I thought the style with which Harrison composed the novel was perfect for the story and setting. The author has a great gift for images: `God exhaling clouds of geese' (p.224); and `Like a key, the thought of her eluding him turns in his flesh' (p. 29). This is great writing.
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Summary: I liked this one, but it wasn't the best I have every read..
Review: I read this book in a week, which is great for me, but I would have liked to have seen the characters enhanced alittle bit. I would have liked to seen the woman character, talk or atleast show some affection toward him.
I did like the book.
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Summary: A very cold and long winter...
Review: In the beginning this book had me hooked. I couldn't put it down. The visuals and the mysterious characters were very appealing. I think Kathryn Harrison is a fabulous writer, but near the end the story lost its juice. The story didn't turn out in the wonderful way I had hoped. It was all too predictable in the end. But still worth a read.
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Summary: SEAL WIFE is the best novel of 2002 to date.
Review: In this sparce but richly woven tale of ALASKA circa 1915, KATHRYN HARRISON not only gives us history but looks right into obsession, hard work and motivation to achieve, erotic desire and fulfillment, loneliness, treachery, pain, friendship, loss, recovery --- all the things that give life meaning. Brilliantly told yet easily accessible, HARRISON wastes not one word of her short novel. It's no secret that critics loathe HARRISON, perhaps personal reasons, I don't know or care. But for us just-love-a-good-read buyers, she's TOP OF THE LINE.
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Summary: The Heart Of Darkness (and Light)....
Review: Kathryn Harrison's THE SEAL WIFE is far and away her finest work, and one of the finest works of fiction published this year. Written in a very spare style, Harrison doesn't waste a word, a paragraph or a chapter in telling this story of a US government scientist sent to the wilds of Alaska in 1915. Bigelow's assignment is to map the weather patterns of the area, where railroads and infrastructure are to be built, extracting the riches of gold, furs and other precious commodities. Bigelow embarks upon an ambitious quest to construct the biggest kite known, which will aid him in understanding the changeable nature of the region's weather. The kite itself becomes a metaphor for a man's quest for unattainable love, his desire to conquer nature, and the consequences of reaching too far outside one's known experiences in life.
Bigelow has three relationships through the course of the story: one with the kite, which consumes not only his intellect and emotions, but great periods of his time every day; a physical and strangely emotionally distant relationship with an Aleut woman whose name and background he never knows fully. Thirdly, he has another physical and highly emotional liaison with a young woman who communicates only through song.
Harrison's descriptions of the Alaskan frontier with all its vastness, great white blankets of snow and ice, and the long stretches of light and darkness bring the reader into Bigelow's setting like no other novel I can remember.
THE SEAL WIFE is the finest example of the novelist's craft! I would really, really like to see her write into a screenplay. This is a story of great drama veiled by the whiteness of Alaska, and the loneliness of a man's soul. Beautifully done, Kathryn Harrison!!
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Summary: An Intense, Compelling Read
Review: Kathryn Harrison's The Seal Wife is quite an intense read. It is the story of Bigelow Greene, a young man who moves to Alaska in 1915 to establish a weather station. He becomes obsessed with a silent Aleut woman he becomes sexually involved with and when she mysteriously disappears, his world, and perhaps his sanity begin to crumble. He becomes involved with another silent woman and his simple life grows more and more complex. The brutal Alaskan landscape serves as an excellent backdrop for this novel and its language. The Seal Wife is certainly not for the faint of heart--Bigelow is obsessed with sex and Harrison is not afraid to delve deeply into that obsession. If you can take that, try this intense read. It's hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: An Intense, Compelling Read
Review: Kathryn Harrison's The Seal Wife is quite an intense read. It is the story of Bigelow Greene, a young man who moves to Alaska in 1915 to establish a weather station. He becomes obsessed with a silent Aleut woman he becomes sexually involved with and when she mysteriously disappears, his world, and perhaps his sanity begin to crumble. He becomes involved with another silent woman and his simple life grows more and more complex. The brutal Alaskan landscape serves as an excellent backdrop for this novel and its language. The Seal Wife is certainly not for the faint of heart--Bigelow is obsessed with sex and Harrison is not afraid to delve deeply into that obsession. If you can take that, try this intense read. It's hard to put down.
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Summary: A SUPERIOR READING
Review: Kathryn Harrison, author of "The Kiss" and "The Binding Chair," underscores her reputation as a writer of compelling fiction with this tale of passion and obsession on the desolate Alaskan frontier. Fred Stella provides a superior reading. It is 1915 when Bigelow, a young scientist, is dispatched to build a weather observatory in Anchorage. He is optimistic and enthusiastic, little realizing what life will be like in an arctic railroad town peopled by men and precious few women. The nights are endless and lonely. Before long he is held sway by a seemingly unknowable woman, Aleut. She is not his only obsession - he designs a kite intended to fly higher than any kite has ever flown. Harrison's recreation of an icy landscape in all its beauty and danger is spectacular. Stella's reading illuminates that world and her words. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: A SUPERIOR READING
Review: Kathryn Harrison, author of "The Kiss" and "The Binding Chair," underscores her reputation as a writer of compelling fiction with this tale of passion and obsession on the desolate Alaskan frontier. Fred Stella provides a superior reading. It is 1915 when Bigelow, a young scientist, is dispatched to build a weather observatory in Anchorage. He is optimistic and enthusiastic, little realizing what life will be like in an arctic railroad town peopled by men and precious few women. The nights are endless and lonely. Before long he is held sway by a seemingly unknowable woman, Aleut. She is not his only obsession - he designs a kite intended to fly higher than any kite has ever flown. Harrison's recreation of an icy landscape in all its beauty and danger is spectacular. Stella's reading illuminates that world and her words. - Gail Cooke
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Summary: the triangularity of desire, passion, and obsession
Review: Never afraid to chart the dark sides of passion, obsession and human desire, Kathryn Harrison takes these trademark themes a step further in her latest novel, THE SEAL WIFE. Just as Harrison is known for charting these elements in her novels (there perhaps is not one novel in which she does not dissect these emotions), we are here introduced to a young man who is himself charting elements: the meteorological polarities of WWI-era Alaska for the United States government who wish to utilize Alaska's resources during wartime due to national dearth. In this regard, Harrison takes her usual narrative and thematic interiority and places her protagonist within an exterior setting so strikingly similar to his interior struggles that each balances or belies the other accordingly as the novel progresses. By escaping from the first-person narrative normally employed by the writer, she gives us an objective account of both setting and character, never venturing too far, however, from Bigelow, the protagonist. Her prose is gorgeous in this novel; while THE BINDING CHAIR found her playing more with plot than character, Harrison here seems to return to her more poetic, hypnotic, and captivating style, found particularly in POISON and in her now-infamous memoir, THE KISS. The style of the novel echoes the intensity of Bigelow's character, the swift fluctuations between needing, desiring, and merely wanting to possess. For this is a novel about possession; Bigelow's engulfing passion (bordering on obsession) for the silent Aleut woman grants him the opportunity to conjure her in his mind as he sees fit. Her silence---and the other noted silences within the novel---seems to set off his passion, as though an almost Lothario or Don Juan syndrome is at play, in which the male's pursuit of the female is more satisfying than actually possessing her. Once again, Harrison has created a world in which interiority and exteriority are inextricably linked, a world in which passion rules. Undaunted in her exploration of passion and obsession, most notably their dark and irrational sides, Harrison's novel is certain to entertain and to enlighten those who have ever felt, and then later questioned, the duality of desire. Reviewed by: kris t kahn, Author of ARGUING WITH THE TROUBADOUR: POEMS
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