4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping in its subtle intensity....., September 10, 2007
I really enjoyed this book; I bought it a day before heading out for a 4 day vacation on the southwest coast of rugged Vancouver Island, exactly where this novel spins its web and sucks the unsuspecting reader in. Maybe it was because I could easily connect with the locale or maybe it was because of the author's use of words but this one was a hit for me. I made it a point to drive through East Sooke and hike through the park to water's edge to "feel" the tensions that must have overcome the characters; Cyrus, Nicholas, Greg, Laurel and Samina on the "fateful day" and in the days following. The beautiful descriptions of beach stones and the topography of Sooke Bay made this read very personal. I wonder how much time the author spent in the area; he certainly captures the beauty, mystery and lore of being "out there". Gorgeous. I would have given this a 5 star had it not been for the last section which was a bit unbelieveable and out of place with the rest of the book. My advice? Go to Sooke, Vancouver Island, BC for a visit.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Evil is Never Broke, May 8, 2006
This review is from: The Cottagers: A Novel (Hardcover)
Young Marshall Klimasewiski has a bright future ahead of him if his novel THE COTTAGERS is any indication. Summer people are always an interesting subject for a novel, for there is something wry about their privilege and they becomes objects of fascination or contempt for the year-round residents, just ask Nick Carraway from THE GREAT GATBSY. There's something of Nick Carraway in the teenage protagonist of THE COTTAGERS, but here his name is Cyrus Coddington, and the passions the summer visitors unleash have a distinctly Canadian feel to them; Klimasewiski can describe the warm, clammy heatscapes of Vancouver Island as did Malcolm Lorwy and Dorothy Livesay before him. His tragic foreboding is his own.
Sometimes Cyrus seems a bit too observant and poetic, but that's the nature of the game. The US citizens who take up residence, the easy life, this particular summer are trying to escape the hell of academia, and one of the couples, Nicholas and his Indian-born wife, Samina, seem bewilderingly adrift on the seas of inter-racial tensions, despite having the bond of a lovely daughter, little Hilda, to seal their union. (Hilda celebrates her fourth birthday, and her parents invite Cyrus to the party.) The other couple, Greg and Laurel, are even more neurotic. Cyrus has a sort of COLD COMFORT FARM fixation on them all, and his strange kinship with these strangers begins to seem more and more weird, especially when one disappears and the other survivors begin wondering, what path took us here to this terrifyingly native place?
All of these interpersonal relationships are colored by another character's interest in the personal life of Charles Dodgson, better known to the world as Lewis Carroll, and his possibly demented interest in little girls. Like Henry James, Marshall Klimasewiski knows how to frame a story so that its children, like little Hilda, playing with her crabs, seem terrifyingly in danger even in placid, intellectual surroundings. In some ways I thought, that THE COTTAGERS resembles a modern version of Dickens' unfinished MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, right down to its hint of an exotic India lurking in the background of the visitors, but finished this time, to a perfect patina of loss, regret, desire and dementia. As Cyrus says, "Evil is never broke."
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
99% characterization free, August 15, 2010
Reading a few brief reviews of this book, I expected something really good....but it turned out to be one of only a very few books that I just could not finish....I got halfway through the jumble of plot, setting and character, with the latter so lacking that I could not feel anything for any of the characters. I was mostly just confused and often challenged to find not just the relationship between subject and predicate but to find subject and predicate themselves inside clauses with numerous and confusing pronouns for characters that were missing in inaction. I had to reread numerous sentences to make the most basic sense of them, and even then I often felt I was guessing.
I was reminded of an interview with Kurt Vonnegut. He was talking about the most challenging aspect of fiction as striking the right balance between character and plot with the right emphasis on each of them in a story told in a way that was accessibleto the reader. This book is an example of missing that balance in the vehicle of a story that gets close to being interesting but never quite makes it. Coupled with weak characterization and awkward sentence structure, this one was a miss for me.
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