Consumption [Paperback]

Kevin Patterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2008

Born in the 1950s, Victoria knows nothing but the nomadic life of the Inuit until, at age ten, she is sent to a sanitarium to recover from tuberculosis. Six years later, she returns to a radically different world, a stranger to her family and culture. She marries a non-Inuit, Robertson; as their children gravitate toward the pop culture of the mainland, and as her husband exploits the economic opportunities that the Arctic offers, Victoria is torn between her family and her ancestors, between the communal life of the North and the material life of the “South.” Kevin Patterson, acclaimed author of The Water in Between and Country of Cold, exposes the consequences of cultural assimilation, and the toll that modernization takes on communities in this epic novel of the Arctic.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this powerful first novel, a beautiful Inuit woman spends her teen years in the 1960s in a Montreal TB sanitarium, learning French and mathematics from nuns. Upon returning to her Hudson Bay hamlet to live in a government-made dwelling, Victoria feels like a stranger living in a kind of internal exile and shudders at the taste of half-rotted walrus meat. After getting pregnant by a Kablunauk (Inuktitut for white person), she marries him. Husband Robertson's ambition rankles the community to begin with, and when he accepts work from a South African mining company that wants to dig for diamonds in the frozen tundra, things come to a boiling point. Keith Balthazar, a doctor who comes to the community from New York, tends to Victoria's children in illness and gets unexpectedly entwined in the family's life. In language that is always sharp and sometimes mesmerizing, Patterson, author of a story collection and the memoir The Water in Between, seamlessly works murder, sex and intrigue into the mix and offers a terrific cast that makes arctic life, and the ties of kin, palpable. He delivers a searingly visceral message about love, loss and dislocation. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Gently seductive. . . . Remarkably compelling. . . . [Patterson's] insight into the human condition pulls us to the heart of events."—The Washington Post“Utterly absorbing. . . . Engag[es] the heart as well as the mind in the service of a greater truth.” —The Times-Picayune “Patterson's own experience . . . lends his simply told, involving novel an unmatchable authority.”—Entertainment Weekly“Patterson is a sure guide through inhospitable terrain, be it [that] of the tundra or the far recesses of the soul.”—The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (July 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307278948
• ISBN-13: 978-0307278944
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Canadian

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read, completely engrossing., January 1, 2008

By 

K. A. Tappe "Incurable Book Worm" (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Consumption: A novel (Hardcover)

This is probably the best book I read in 2007. It follows a woman of the Inuit tribes in northern Canada as she is treated for consumption (TB) as a child, brought to live among white Canadians, and then re-incorporated back into a changing Inuit landscape that is absorbing more and more white culture. The author tells the story from several points of view, the most interesting of which is a physician who provides a narrative history of consumption/tuberculosis. I learned a lot from those sections, as well as generally from the book about the Inuit and the travails of living in the Arctic circle.

The only reason I did not give this 5 stars is because there is a plot line regarding a murder that I felt stuck out from the rest of the narrative in an uncomfortable way. I also got the sense the book was not quite sure how to finish itself. Otherwise, it was a book that was difficult to put down with very interesting and complex character development. Of particular note is how each character is depicted neither as all good or all bad (a trap that many writers fall into). Instead, each character is presented with a depth that includes both positive and negative aspects, so that ultimately we feel for these characters is the same way that we might feel for people in our real lives.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could be the best work of fiction in 2007., September 23, 2007

By 

Rocco B. Rubino "Rocco R." (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Consumption: A novel (Hardcover)

Consumption deals with the little known world of the Inuit people. Like our Amish here in America, the Inuit live a separated life; in ways,customs,dress,speech, and food.

The story centers around the sensual and worldy-wise, some might say cynical, Victoria Robertson, a native Inuit who becomes pregnant with a white man's child and later marries him. Earlier in life, Victoria is severed from her Inuit world when she is ravaged by TB. Her parents send her to the city to be cared for by a religious order where she receives her elementary education and learns English, and she becomes close to a white family.

When she is eventually reunited with her Inuit family, she shudders at the thought of seal meat. In time, she is hanging around town, and when diamonds are discovered and a mine is being constructed, an engineer is frequenting the stores. She hungers for knowledge of the outside world and soon strikes up a friendship with the much-older Robertson, who eventually impregnates her, then marries her.

At the risk of revealing too much of the story, this book dwells heavily on the implications of what happens when cultures collide, when civilizatinos clash, when the old cannot be reconciled with the new; the results are complicated. There are a number of side plots and sub plots. The author is to be commended for not tying everything up into one neat tidy little package at the end of the book, but rather he leaves many questions unanswered.

Consumption is as fine a work of fiction as I have read in a long time. There are the great existential themes that will have you putting the book down and looking out the window and pondering on life. It is a haunting work that borders on cynicism. It is, however, a tale of the tenderness, and weakness that is the human condition.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best I've read this year!, September 17, 2007

By 

weekly reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Consumption: A novel (Hardcover)

I have never written a review but I am surprised this book is not getting more attention. I read quite a few books every week and this one was exceptional. The majority of the book takes place in the Artic, a place where most of us will never visit and it has a wealth of information on the Inuit culture and history, past and present. Its story deals with universal themes of loss, adaptation to change, loneliness and isolation, and families struggling at all stages of their lives. Like life, this book takes you through every emotion. It also includes the lives of those who are not Inuit.