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Lesley Thomas
Publisher: Far Eastern Press
Pub. Date: February 12, 2005
ISBN-13: 978-0967884219
430pp
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After an exquisite takeoff, the story of Flight
Of The Goose by Lesley Thomas struggles to remain
airborne, weighted down it seems by the literal and symbolic floes it
hauntingly depicts. I’m ambivalent regarding the ultimate success or
failure of this nonetheless beautifully written, ethereal novel. Listen
first to the mythic language from the opening pages:
“Let me tell a story to cast light on the dark world and the darkening
heart….There was a young man [Willy] who hunted geese to feed his family and
another [Leif] who studied geese to save them. There was a young woman [Kayuqtuq] who flew into the world of the spirits to save
herself.”
Masterful evocation laying down not only
the ominous tone permeating the novel, set on the Gyulnyev
Peninsula in the town of Itiak, Alaska, circa 1971,
but also a bare-bones summary of a peculiar arctic love triangle as well.
The narrative alternates between the perspectives of Kayuqtuq,
a deeply wounded young native Alaskan woman orphaned and exploited as a child,
an angutkoq (shaman) in secret training, and
the naluagmiu (mildly pejorative Bering Strait
Inupiaq term for “Caucasian”) biologist, Leif, nicknamed “birdman,” up from the
lower 48 to study the effect of oil spills on the migratory habits of geese; in
particular, the ever elusive and endangered species of geese, the Tallin.
The bleak descriptions of the
Alaskan arctic are as simultaneously sweeping and intricate in detail as that
sought after flock of geese. It’s a dreary, depressing landscape, even in
summer when the sun never sets. The stark settings mirror the oppressed moods
and lives of our main protagonists. Kayuqtuq
(or, “Gretchen,” her naluagmiu name), is hard
to like at first. Not until past page 200 when the specificity of her
past injuries are revealed, do I truly sympathize and
feel for her. Not until she sees past her bitterness and opens up to and
stops toying with the birdman (whom she secretly loves but who’s got his own
dark baggage as well which hinders their blossoming romance) and removes her
Eskimo-outlawed, secret angutkoq mask – the
only means she’s found of empowering herself besides her sullenness -- can the
reader empathize with her. Sure, we feel bad that she’s an orphan, like
we feel bad that Oliver Twist or David Copperfield are orphans; and we feel
even worse witnessing her treated as an outcast in Inupiaq society because
she’s more inland-Indian than coastal-Eskimo, but, good Lord, she’s built such
enormous bitter walls so icy-iglooish-thick that it’s
mighty hard mustering up compassion for her. Not liking Kayuqtuq made the book difficult to read for me.
Anti-heroes are one thing, Leona Helmsley-types,
another. After all, the book is already darn difficult to read as
we flip b ack-and-forth between the text and the
Inupiaq dictionary that Thomas, thankfully, has provided at the rear.
Yes, Kayuqtuq ultimately redeems herself after some
pretty heinous, though understandable, actions against both Willy and Leif
(understandable in that victims so often become victimizers themselves, acting
out their grief and rage on innocent bystanders they’ve bonded with who receive
the misdirected vengeance truly meant for their now, out-of-the-picture,
spiteful perpetrators), but she remains so emotionally detached (granted, if
we're to believe Kayuqtuq, Eskimos, unlike naluagmiu, do not wear their hearts on their
sleeves, and believe that doing so is both shameful and a sure sign of
weakness) from the consequences of her decisions, rationalizing them into the
spirit world, that I, naluagmiu critic
that I am, cannot identify nor relate to her enough to bridge this
unfortunate cultural divide.
Flight Of The
Goose is more character study than story;
it’s elevated psychological fiction (or we could also rightly call it, elevated
psychopathological fiction – it’s that psychiatrically astute), full of shamanistic
dysfunction, intergenerational and relational dysfunction, self-defeating
behavior, cross cultura l nuance and complexity of
the kind made famous by Melville.
Book Review Grade
B-
Book Review Posted: October 21, 2008 (Book Review by Brent Higgins)
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