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A review by desirosie
Far North by Marcel Theroux
4.0
Very good; really intense at times. (<--2010 comments).
2020 update:
A few days ago, I went to add this book to my "Currently Reading" queue after I was already 70-odd pages in, only to discover that I had in fact read this book before, a decade earlier. (Aside: I've been on Goodreads a long time and that makes me very happy.) I scratched my head and felt some level of existential distress because I had *no recollection* of the first reading up to that point though I suppose there was a certain vague familiarity to the story. I've read enough It's The End of The World As We Know It books though to chalk it up to post-apocalyptic overload + I Had A Brain Tumor And Sometimes Forget Things. I didn't know what to do - do I keep going or quit? My previous reading indicated that I enjoyed it at the time, and a very scientific Twitter poll told me that I should keep going, so I did. Someone even commented that, "You are not the same person you were in 2010, and so it is not the same book." (or thereabouts). How very wise indeed, and how very true.
SO - I finished the book and I still give it 4 stars, but they are different stars because I am a different person and the world is different. It is, after all 20-Fucking-20, Year of the Dumpster Fire, and I have been through a lot, myself, including becoming a mother, a fact which brings me endless joy while also being a sad weight around my neck. Two quotes from the end of the novel:
"And I'm still greedy for whatever's left to me. I can't open my eyes soon enough each day to see you, my darling."
"There's not one iota of fear in me about it. I wouldn’t have you stay for anything. But I can't think too hard about the world I've bequeathed to you, or the gulf between your childhood and mine or I start to feel guilty about it."
2020 update:
A few days ago, I went to add this book to my "Currently Reading" queue after I was already 70-odd pages in, only to discover that I had in fact read this book before, a decade earlier. (Aside: I've been on Goodreads a long time and that makes me very happy.) I scratched my head and felt some level of existential distress because I had *no recollection* of the first reading up to that point though I suppose there was a certain vague familiarity to the story. I've read enough It's The End of The World As We Know It books though to chalk it up to post-apocalyptic overload + I Had A Brain Tumor And Sometimes Forget Things. I didn't know what to do - do I keep going or quit? My previous reading indicated that I enjoyed it at the time, and a very scientific Twitter poll told me that I should keep going, so I did. Someone even commented that, "You are not the same person you were in 2010, and so it is not the same book." (or thereabouts). How very wise indeed, and how very true.
SO - I finished the book and I still give it 4 stars, but they are different stars because I am a different person and the world is different. It is, after all 20-Fucking-20, Year of the Dumpster Fire, and I have been through a lot, myself, including becoming a mother, a fact which brings me endless joy while also being a sad weight around my neck. Two quotes from the end of the novel:
"And I'm still greedy for whatever's left to me. I can't open my eyes soon enough each day to see you, my darling."
"There's not one iota of fear in me about it. I wouldn’t have you stay for anything. But I can't think too hard about the world I've bequeathed to you, or the gulf between your childhood and mine or I start to feel guilty about it."