qasimrishi

"Monkey Beach" is named (supposedly) because of frequent viewings of sasquatch. For Lisamarie, the protagonist of Eden Robinson's novel about the Haisla area of British Columbia, Monkey Beach is the site of a great personal tragedy. As she remembers her childhood in this beautiful but haunted area, she is visited by the ghosts from her past. Indeed, she has a great deal of loss in her family, and she copes with it by retreating into Indian floklore and magic. All in all it is a good read about what is, to me at least, an exotic area. It tends to bog down without specific plot devices to push the story forward, making it a series of vignettes, some comic, some tragic. This is not really a fault and it is definitely not a bad novel. But there were some places I wished I was driven a little more to push toward the end.

2022-11-14 14:03