Lost Geography: A Novel [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Charlotte Bacon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2001

In her triumphant debut novel, Charlotte Bacon explores the transitions that sixty years visit upon the members of an unforgettable family—a Saskatchewan woman and her Scottish husband; their independent daughter who moves to Toronto; and her daughter, who lives in France with her Turkish-English husband. In settings both rural and urban, these stalwart, resilient people respond not only to new environments and experiences but to the eruption of sudden loss. Taking the complexity of migration as its central subject, Lost Geography invites us to witness how habits of survival translate from one generation to another.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Everything goes in cycles in Bacon's quietly impressive debut novel (following her short story collection, A Private State), in which three generations of down-to-earth young women weathered by adversity seek less steady but sufficiently tractable men for taming, childbearing, then marriage. For Margaret in Saskatchewan in 1933, her daughter, Hilda, in Toronto, and her daughter, Danielle, in Paris, the more things change, the more they stay the same. All these women are strong, reserved, sensual, practical and capable of one major move, after which they settle down, eternally faithful to their offspring and the mate from whom they are parted only by death. Each man has one or two salient characteristics (Davis is a secret lover of beauty, Armand deals in antiques and generosity, Osman in secrets and gambling), but each couple is similarly devoted, and apart from a mother-in-law or two, sufficient one to the other. No one has friends outside the family. These are quiet people who communicate largely without talking, so the dialogue is limited, apart from pointed stories about earlier generations. Bacon's rather detached third-person narrative, which moves from husband to wife, also keeps the reader at a distance. But her prose has a pleasing simplicity that makes the book a quick and pleasurable read, and she captures moments well, as when Danielle and Osman, getting serious, "sat there for a few more minutes, quietly measuring each other's capacity for danger." Cool as the novel can be, its conclusion, set in 1990s New York, where Osman moves with their children, Sophie and Sasha, after Danielle's death, glows with a hard-won warmth. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The family featured in Bacon's tale moves among Regina, Saskatchewan; Toronto; Paris; London; and New York City and takes place between 1933 and the present. The book opens with the first narrator, Margaret, a nurse, who meets her future husband, Davis, a Scottish immigrant, when she treats him for a bad case of the flu. They fall in love and raise three children: Hilda, Jem, and Stuart. The second narrator, Hilda, then moves on to Toronto, where she creates a new life and gives birth to Danielle, the third narrator. After school, Danielle moves to France and meets Osman Harris, a Turkish-English man. They marry and have two children, Sasha and Sophie, the final narrators of this tale. A neatly interwoven story of landscape, personal history, and survival, this multigenerational first novel contemplates how much we are made up of our past as well as out present. With well-drawn characters and a subtle palette for a plot, this is a very good book about loss and change. For public and academic libraries.
Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• ISBN-10: 0312420528
• ASIN: B000IOEUJA
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #686,469 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finding one's place on the map..., July 21, 2000

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Lost Geography: A Novel (Hardcover)

Images of maps, bits of geography float through this excellent story of four generations of women--Margaret, Hilda, Danielle, and Sophia. Margaret is a nurse in Saskatchewan when she meets her future husband Davis, a Scots immigrant searching for his fortune in the new world. Davis, felled by a fever, changes course and settles down as a farmer-husband-parent. Daughter Hilda chooses to move onto Toronto where she makes a different kind of life with an antiques dealer. Margaret's granddaughter Danielle leaves her mother Hilda and migrates to Paris where she meets Osman, a dealer in antique oriental rugs. After Danielle dies, Osman and their two children Sasha and Sophia move to New York to begin again.

On the surface, the stories of these women's lives do not contain obvious morals or seem to have a purpose other than their recounting. However, this is a tale not only of shifting landscape, but of the search for one's place in the geography of the heart. It puts me in mind of the short-story novels of Alice Munro--'Friend of My Youth' or 'Lives of Girls and Women.' The richness of the text is like a Bazaar. Colorful and original images abound--the grandmother who is bent like a cipher and feels like a raspy husk when she hugs you; the former library-cum crater, filled with mushrooms feeding on mouldering books and lined with Queen Anne's Lace; the little boxes filled with copper pennies turned green, stacked and hidden behind the old kitchen stove--and rugs, maps, and mellow old wooden antiques. Bacon's writing is as rich as the antique Yatak pictured on the book jacket.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written story!, May 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Lost Geography: A Novel (Hardcover)

Lost Geography is a beautifully written book. The discriptions of place, and the thoughts of each character are so poetic and unique it took my breath away. It is a generational story about the way we fall in love, how fate and place and those we meet shape us, how our plans may get changed but life can lead us to the unexpected, that even through pain there is joy. Charlotte Bacon weaves us a tapestry with her words and characters. You should read it.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More than just Geographically Lost, September 7, 2000

By 

Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Geography: A Novel (Hardcover)

I really wanted to like this book. It's episodic expanse of multi-generational portraits were like looking in an old photo album of family pictures. Each character was interesting enough. However, like looking at the old photos, nothing much actually happened in the book. I kept expecting that events would also lead to a sense of the profound. Ultimately, this only achieved a sense of the mundane. After reading through these 259 pages, I felt like I'd labored through an 800-page Russian novel or the collected short stories of Mavis Gallant. I suppose in what was supposed to be a true-to-life portrait, the sudden deaths were to reveal the meaning of life rather than simply being jarring. And the ending left me clueless. What was that? What is one supposed to get from standing in the window other than the book is over with the characters left standing in the windows? If there was a hidden profundity in the ending, I totally missed it. Perhaps this is a book that would resonate more with a woman than a man. If you spend the time with this, I hope you find it a more satisfying read than I. -- And if you get the ending, why not email me to let me in on what I should have gotten? [e-mail]