Customer Reviews

A Dream in Polar Fog

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"If you don't want me to be angry, don't call me a white man." I'm loving Yuri Rythkeu's A DREAM IN POLAR FOG, the first novel by this author I have stumbled across. It has a strange, surreal storyline that seems to be a combination of Native People's origin myths and the underground of Dostoevsky. What happens when cultures collide? If they are cultures with very differing strengths, then one inevitably crumbles, and when McLennan, the Canadian sailor, is abandoned by the rest of his crew and left to die in the Arctic wilderness, he gradually feels his culture flake off of him like a snake his skin.

In its place he adopts many of the ways of the tribe who have taken him in and saved his life. Is this a case of Stockholm Syndrome? Almost, but it is Rytkheu's strength as a novelst to make this transition seem inevitable. You'll love the Chukotka people and their ways of doing things which have been authentic survivals from what must be the Iron Age. Their hunts, their feasts, their joys and sorrows are all seen through the half-sophisticated, half-adrift sailor boy John. When John stumbled across the carcass of a whale, the force of Rytkeu's writing hits you with a visceral punch, it's almost as if you were there in that terrible place of ice and decay. The notes and glossary are exemplary, printed in that "ghost" type (half the amount of ink as in the actual text) that Black Sparrow used to print the "Explanatory Notes" in Jack Spicer's "Homage to Creeley." I must comment also on the translation (out of the Russian) by Ilona Yazhin Chavasse. What a masterful segue from Russian to English--by way of the Chukotka tongue. You will feel effortless, like a plank on the sea, floating, through the pages of this book, like a dream in polar fog.

This book brings you into the life of the Chukchi people, offering a believable and complicated portrait through excellently rendered Chukchi characters as well as the perspective of the unlucky Canadian sailor. They are a wise and proud people and their land, which you completely escape into through this novel, was and I hope still is worthy of their all-out efforts to live and prosper there. Do not, by the way, expect an intricately plotted novel (the climax, in particular, is 'not all that'). The plot falls into the rhythms of the Arctic seasons, and, as the Union-Tribune writes above, 'Dream' is "more a state of consciousness experienced than a tale told." I say experience it.

It is a story we repeatedly encounter in fiction (Kim (Barnes & Noble Classics), Shogun) and of course in Hollywood (Dances with Wolves (Full Screen Theatrical Edition), Avatar, Little Big Man): an outsider encounters an aboriginal culture and learns what it means to be truly human, scorning the imperialistic culture from which he came.

But Rytkheu does not fall into the trap of easy platitudes and sentimentality. He does not whitewash the brutal existence of the native culture at the center of the novel - northeastern Siberia's Chukchi people, and he paints both "sides" in many shades of grey. Indeed, Rytkheu is himself a Chukchi, and the focus of A Dream in Polar Fog seems less the clash of cultures than a portrayal of an utterly foreign way of life - that of a distinct, remote Siberian community before the invasion of modernity made many things easier, while washing away many things of value.

In actuality, however, the heart of this novel is an adventure tale in the best traditions of Jack London or Hemingway, and it is told in a rich, at times mesmerizing prose:

"They decided to row from shore, so that the motor's roar did not reach the breeding ground and frighten off the animals. Steadily, the oars dipped into the heavy, viscous water, and thickly the drops plunked down, rolling down the long oar blades. Only the creaking of the oarlocks broke the silence. The people did not speak amongst themselves, and not just because each one was busy with a task of his own, but such was the old custom - hunters don't open their mouths when there is no need."

As reviewed in Russian Life magazine.

This is a fascinating look at the story of a Canadian sailor, John MacLennon, who enters deeply into the life of the Chukchi people on the Chukhotka Peninsula in Siberia. John at first is shallow and is repulsed by the Chukchi way of life, but in time marries a native woman and has children with her. He is reborn as a real human being, one who can see the Chukchi as admirable and dignified human beings living in a harsh environment that still provides them with what they need and love.

The writing is somewhat flat, but the overall effect is mesmerizing. Read this book if you're interested in native ways seen from the inside. The author is himself a Chukchi and an important political leader as well. The sense of place is overwhelming and the characters are fully drawn.

I read this unusual book, passed it on to my husband and we passed it on to our daughter. We hope that the books' journey continues. It is a
wonderful follow-up to the PBS genetic beginnings series that mentions these people.
The book is thoughtful, well written.

This is one of those life changing books, found by accident and passed on to as many friends as I could get to read it. The translation picked up the subtle mood of the story and the "lessons" were a melody which keeps ringing in my ears. Others have described what happens in the book. I will just say that after I finished the book, there was wonder, clarity, and a peaceful feeling akin to a snowy day sparkling in filtered light.

This was a hard book to put down once I'd started. The story has a stranded Canadian sailor, John McLennan, as its main character, whose life is saved by the Chukchi. During his becoming adapted to their way of life and marrying among them, he finds the English language useful in communicating with and warding off occasional scientific explorers and other adventurers, who find these inhabitants and their land of Wrangel Island off Siberia tempting prey for get-rich schemers. The full range of lean and prosperous seasons in the stark, isolated landscape circa 1910 to 1917 is heartbreaking and joyous in turns. The reader will find plenty of walrus and nerpa and other sea animals and their usefulness to wonder at. The flavor of the this slice of life comes through too from the translator's leaving in some authentic everyday words, whose meaning is immediately appararent from the context or the aid right at the bottom of the page.

. . it could rival all the great ones. It is truth, beauty, moral, honest, and an important statement about mankind. It is a fresh as morning light dancing off the snow and is not dull or predictable at all. . what a masterpiece. I recommend it highly to anyone who thinks and enjoys a deep connection with our natural world.

A wonderful story taking place in the early 20th century of a seriously wounded Canadian adventurer, left behind in the unknown wastes of the Arctic with the Chukchi people whom he first barely deigns to recognize as human. Slowly becoming part of this unfamiliar civilization and their harsh daily fight for survival it dawns him to question his former "civilized" life and the motivation for his people's expansion into the arctic habitat. Filled with beautiful details of a quickly vanishing culture this novel doesn't allow you to put it down before having inhaled the last words of "A Dream in Polar Fog".

Siberia is a land of frigid 'nowhere.' a place where Russia used to send political dissidents. This is the story of an Artic aborigines tribe called the people of Chukotka, who rescued a Canadian sailor in September, 1910. The ship John MacLennan left had strayed and gotten stuck in the ice floes surrounding Wrangel Island.

John had been born in Port Hope on the shore of Lake Ontario, but was influenced by Kipling's poems to search for distant lands. He attended the University of Toronto for two years, then decided to follow the footsteps of his uncle who had once sailed the Hudson Bay. He crossed the country by railroad to Vancouver and ventured on to Nome, Alaska. He signed on as an assistant to the captain of a merchant schooner. Trying to get free from the ice, he was involved in a botched dynamite experiment and needed medical care. When gangrene set in, the Shaman-woman of the Chukchi had to amputate his injured hands, saving his life and making him able to survive the tragedy which had befallen him. However, the ship had sailed back to port and left him behind. It was a bad dream which had a silver lining.

Yuri Rytkheu, a native Chukchi, has written a dozen books since the early 60s about the history and mythology of his people who live in that inhospitable environment near Siberia. Translated from the Russian by Ilona Chavasse who was educated at Vasser College after her family emigrated from Belarus to the USA in 1989. She went on to Oxford University and University College, London and lives there. Man and women think differently -- thus, I did not feel like I was floating on a plank in the sea; since I can't swim, that would be the last thing I would feel.