Customer Reviews

Consumption

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

In almost whiplash fashion, Canada's Inuit people were yanked from the traditional lifestyle they had lived for centuries into what should have been for them an easier life in the small Artic communities they had only visited in the past. In a scant three generations (Patterson's book covers the 1950s to the 1990s), these people went from living "on the land" to watching their young people leave the Artic entirely in order to seek a lifestyle scarcely heard of by their grandparents. That such a rapid change was almost certain to be a destructive one does not lessen the impact of Patterson's story of the Inuit as they move from a difficult, but successful, lifestyle to one of poverty and confusion, and on to a generation of children with material and cultural desires that can no longer be satisfied in the Artic.

Patterson tells the Inuit story largely through the eyes of Victoria Robinson, an Inuit woman who, when she developed tuberculosis at ten years of age, was taken from her parents and sent to Montreal for treatment. By the time that she was returned to her parents as a teenager, they were no longer living "on the land" and had moved to the small Artic town of Rankin Inlet. Victoria, now an educated young woman with some knowledge of the world, felt like an outsider when she was reunited with her family. She knew that she was different, and so did they. Her marriage to a Kablunauk, a white man, seemed inevitable to her parents, and the experiences of her bi-racial children reflect all of the pressures and desires confronted by young people who must abandon their own culture in order to have better lives than the one experienced by their grandparents and parents.

Consumption is a complex, multi-generational family saga filled with numerous characters, each of which contributes to fleshing out the world that Kevin Patterson has created. Patterson does not limit himself to a single point of view, including among his characters several Kablunauk who have come to the Rankin Inlet settlement for reasons of their own, some looking for adventure, some hoping to profit financially from what they find there, and others determined to accomplish some good by working to make the lives of the locals better.

Interspersed among the book's chapters are short medical science essays attributed to Keith Balthazar, the town doctor who splits his time between Rankin Inlet and his apartment in New York. Readers might be tempted to skim, or even to skip, these essays but, by doing so, would miss many details and subtleties associated with the overall story. Like each of Patterson's characters, the essays add bits and pieces of detail that help make Consumption into the moving novel that it is. It is near impossible for most readers to imagine the loneliness and isolation of the 1960s Artic settlements. Patterson not only makes it possible for us to imagine it, he achieves it in the most effective manner there is, by adding layer upon layer of detail and emotion until the reader comes to feel completely comfortable with the environment described and the people who live in it.

This is a remarkable first novel.

I highly recommend this book. Gave it to my father in-law who has written several books on Alaska, and the Inuit. He loved it so much that he wrote to the author. I loved this book also and like another reviewer, am really surprised this book is not winning awards all over the place. I've already gotten about 5 or 6 others to read it, am starting my own grass roots fan club for this book!

This book is very well written. The author beautifully illustrates the arctic environment and the struggle of the people who live there. I found the transitions that the Inuit went through over the course of forty years to be particularly fascinating. The advances in technology which were at some times welcome and other times not welcome were clearly described in the book. It was a culture I really knew nothing about so I enjoyed immersing myself in a new, unknown people's life.

As mentioned in the synopsis, the book follows an Inuit woman who struggled with TB as a young girl and later marries a white man. The book is heavy on drama and sadness. It is not the feel good book of the year. However, the tragedy is, most of the time, believable. There were a few moments that I felt the author took dramatic license because it was unlikely for so much tragedy to happen to one family and the murder plot line seemed a bit off for the book. Yet it all did seem to come together in the end with a very satisfying ending.

My only true criticism of the book is that it covers too many characters. In much the same way that movies with large casts can get convoluted, this book was a bit too loaded with characters. The book jumps all over the place in regards to time which the reader eventually adjusts to. The changing time line was actually accomplished fairly well but the excessive number of characters was distracting at times.

This story is original, unlike anything else out right now. Beautifully written and, I think, an important piece of work for the Inuit people.

this is one of the most intriguing books i've ever read because, written by a doctor, it combines a story line with medical information on how to live long and prosper as"spock""

would have said. check it out i think you just might like it.

Author has a remarkable talent for creating characters whom you think you might care about, but in the end... not so much. Author is an MD. I am an MD. His medical information is accurate, albeit depressing. Tuberculosis is a depressing disease. As its moniker suggests, it "consumes" everything it touches. If the author's intent is to create a novel that reflects this disease's processes, he succeeds. If it is to create a gripping story that you care about... not so much.

This was a pretty good read, but Patterson has a tendency to digress in a bit of a wind-baggy way (he also exhibited this tendency in The Water in Between, but that was a much better book). The best parts concerned life on "the land" juxtaposed against encroaching modern life - excellent descriptions of dog-sledding, making igloos... I could have done without the heavy dose of medical information.

Patterson writes skillfully, but inconsistently about Inuit life. The main flaw in the flow is his attempt to cover too many characters. The back and forth jeopardizes the main thread.