Customer Reviews

High Latitudes: A Romance

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"High Latitudes" was one of the best novels of the 1990s. The prose dazzles. The plot weaves through time like a dream shot through with a thin but unmistakable atmosphere of dread. It is a love story haunted by the passing of a way of life, the death of a class. Buchan has a voice like none other in contemporary fiction. Try this book; it may take some work getting accustomed to Buchan's way of telling his story, but I found it tremendously rewarding.

Life is so complex when you consider the backgrounds, emotions, cultures, experiences, and motivations of people that the common novel presents a completely false picture when it distills all these things into simple characters. Yes, they are easy to read but also easily forgetable. Like Dostoyevsky, Buchan tries, in a more abbreviated way, to get a handle on the characters in this London (and overseas locales)novel. It moves around a bit but isn't most human interaction choppy and at times inscrutable? I found it interesting to try to piece together and to see what the author was getting at. The characters continued to reveal themselves but this didn't lend itself to increased coherence. People are a mystery and this book was mysteriously interesting. I also had the feeling that the author was writing for himself and not the audience. It was refreshing to try to understand the author rather than be given a feel good cupcake by some happy face author.