Far North by Marcel Theroux
Publication date/ Length: 2009 / 314
Synopsis (from the back cover): Out on the frontier of a failed state, Makepeace — sheriff and perhaps last citizen — patrols a city’s ruins, salvaging books but keeping the guns in good repair.
First Line: “Every day I buckle on my guns and go out to patrol this dingy city.”
Review: My friend recommended this more than once as the best book she had read in a while. Since we have compatible tastes in reading – on the dark side, but with hope glimmering as a stubborn fierce light – I gave it a go. Well, dark really doesn’t begin to describe this post-apocalyptic thriller. But, fortunately, hope burns brightly in the unforgettable narrator.
The setting is near Siberia, sometime not too far off in the future. The worst aspects of human nature have gotten the best of society – refusal to believe or care about global warming and the environment, individual survival over community well-being at all costs, rigid fear-based exclusionary religious doctrine – and the result is a barren, dangerous wasteland devoid of compassion, human connection, and food. Sound like a fun read yet?
Fortunately, the protagonist is extremely engaging and the prose is lightning fast. I began reading this novel while hand-grazing my horse. Hand-grazing involves holding a long lead rope while a horse takes a bite, then a step, then a bite, then a step, in preparation for turning a horse to pasture. Spring grass is so rich and full of sugar that horses need to transition to this diet slowly before indulging all day long. So, starting a novel in this manner is not usually very successful. But with Far North I had devoured 20 pages before I came up for air, and then immediately read 20 more.
Theroux is masterful at creating a plot with twists and turns, and the reader quickly loses sight of just how horrific (and possible) the setting is. I do recommend this novel, but probably to those who enjoyed The Road… Bleak doesn’t begin to describe the paradigm, and the glimmers of hope maybe too subtle for most.
However, as I was reading, I added post it after post it to passages that resonated or startled. Here is a sampling:
“From where I was standing I could see trees growing out of the bleachers round the softball field, which itself was a maze of scrubby bushes. The billboards along Main Street had shriveled in the weather. The drugstore where I used to drink malted mile was a hive of blackened glass and wood. The train station that the line had never reached remained half built and now would never be finished. All those hours and days of human struggle, thousands, millions of them, spent building up this place, only to have it kicked down like an anthill by a spoiled child.”
“All I know is that sometime in late August, when the long nightless summer days were drawing to a close, and the mosquitoes had died off, I ate my supper, pulled on my boots, and went outside to drown myself.”
“The first clear frosty night I saw the Lights, billowing across the sky like god shaking out his laundered sheets – if the Almighty sleeps on green gauze… And that night when I saw the Lights, they hadn’t a jot of consolation in them. They rolled coldly on overhead, like they will for another million years.”
“I had the feeling of something inside me that flipped like a fish in a net. It was hope. As much as I bad-mouth people in general and think the worst of them, I’m secretly waiting for them to surprise me. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to give up on them wholly. Even though they are nine and nine-tenths dirt, now and again they are capable of something angelic. I can’t say that it restores my faith, because I really had none in the first place, but when it happens it does confuse you.”
“…but the years have taught me not to wonder too much at the dark things men do. Strange how it is that men never act crueler than when they’re fighting for the sake of an idea. We’ve been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take it all personal. Those who hurt you don’t have the power over you they would like.”
“Seeing the flowers in that garden bloom so early, and the trees bud so much sooner than they ought, it struck me that a change had happened deep down in the fiber of things, and it put me in mind of the Tungus, who said the world needs to sleep through the winter, or it wakes up angry, like a shatoon, and tears up everything in its path.”
Has anyone else encountered this novel yet? I would love to hear other perspectives!
Oh, the language in the excerpt is breathtaking! This one sounds good…I still haven’t read The Road, although it’s on my list.
Here’s my salon:
http://laurel-rainsnowsaccidentallife.blogspot.com/2010/06/sunday-salon-june-20.html
I read this novel in April and loved it. Here is my review. I am adding yours to mine.
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