Salt [Paperback]

Jeremy Page (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2008

A family saga that explores the relationship between people and the landscape in which they live, Jeremy Page?s atmospheric and lyrical debut novel is revelatory in its use of language and is the work of a significant new writer. Salt tells of a German airman who falls from the sky in 1945 and lands in the middle of a salt marsh in England. Goose, a local woman, digs him up and brings him home. After staying for just nine months, he vanishes in a makeshift boat, leaving Goose behind with a newborn daughter, Lil. Taught to read the clouds by her mother, Lil?s childhood is curious and strange, but when she becomes the object of two brothers? desire, her life takes a tragic turn. Fifteen years later, it is Lil?s son, Pip, who attempts to make sense of his family?s intriguing history. Beguiled by the lovely Elsie who lives nearby, Pip grows up in the marsh like generations before him?but will their unfortunate past repeat itself?.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This remarkable first novel by British script editor Page elevates a tragic family history to the level of myth. In the dying months of the Second World War Goose, a strange, isolated woman who reads omens in the clouds and lives alone in a cottage on the salt marshes of Norfolk, England, finds a German soldier partially buried in the marsh mud. She takes him in, he gets her pregnant and then he flees (on a makeshift boat featuring a quilt for a sail) while she's in labor. Daughter Lil, who grows up wild and strange, becomes the love interest of two brothers (named Shrimp and Kipper) and leaves the marshes in shame at age 16. The story is told through the eyes of Pip, Lil's son, whose inability (or unwillingness) to speak draws Lil and husband George back to the marshes and to Goose. The unforgiving landscape becomes one of the book's main characters; it's a ruthless, powerful force that claims Pip's family members one at a time. But it is Pip's infatuation with Elsie, an odd girl a few years his senior, that will have the direst consequences of all. Page has reinvented the fairy tale with this disturbing and magical saga. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

"Every story heads towards tragedy, given the time," writes Pip, the mute teenage narrator in Page's bleak debut set in marshy, mid–twentieth century Norfolk, England. Pip is determined to unravel his family's history, beginning with the romantic interlude between his grandmother and the German soldier she found buried up to his neck in mud. From that coupling came Pip's mother, Lil, a tragically depressed woman who spent her days reading the clouds and lamenting her increasingly estranged marriage. Pip is a relentlessly unreliable narrator, interweaving fact and fiction to such a degree that even the most astute reader will have trouble distinguishing between the two. Pip's Norfolk dialect is often difficult to navigate, resulting in a tale that's both evocative and exhausting. The young lad has his hands full trying to make sense of his life. His growing affection for fiery-haired neighbor Elsie only complicates matters. This odd, provincial tale never quite hits on all cylinders, but Page is the kind of first novelist readers should give a chance, if only because he likely has better books in him. Block, Allison
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (August 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143114123
• ISBN-13: 978-0143114123
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,737,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars moving, sprawling, August 19, 2007

By 

deus ex machina "----" (atlanta, ga, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Salt (Hardcover)

This is a fantastic first novel, the sort of highly-literary treatise on family that would be remarkable coming late in an author's career-but, as it is, it's a wonder and a treat to consume.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As I Closed The Back Cover, I Closed My Eyes And Said A Silent Thanks For A Tale Well Told, April 9, 2009

By 

Hannah Bochart "The Vermillion Monkey" (Haines, AK USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Salt (Paperback)

Once, long ago, there was a time when books could rise through the ranks of their peers to stand as timeless classics that needed only their title and author as an introduction. GRAPES OF WRATH, CATCHER IN THE RYE, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, MOBY DICK, LITTLE WOMEN, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, all of these monoliths will ever need is their reputation to proceed them. Those days are gone, my friends. In bookstores of today the shelves are lined with so-called classics that only need a stamp of approval from Oprah's Book Club (which usually requires a certain amount of sap oozing from the material) to gain attention. Fleeting attention, I should say, since the self-life of fame is short in the written world these days. And in the flood of ready-made popularity, true, timeless gems are swept away into the shoals of obscurity. Such is the case with SALT. When I found a copy of it sitting on the shelf of a local bookstore, I was intrigued by the unlikely cover, and so, ignoring the ancient warning, judged it to be a worth while expenditure. And this time, I was right to have done so.

The tale begins not with an introduction to the narrator, as one would expect, but on the windswept flats of Norfolk, England. The year is 1945, the "Good War" was almost over, and being incapacitated on the shores of enemy soil is one place a young German soldier would not wish to find himself. But there he is, sunk neck-deep in a salt marsh, at the mercy of a strange young woman who happens to be passing by. Without a second thought given to wartime etiquette, Goose, as we learn the girl is called, fishes "Hands," as she mistakenly calls him, from the grip of the marsh, takes him home, cleans him up, and cooks him a meal. And so Hands stays, at least until Goose, nine months later, goes into labor with the child they conceived. At this point, Hands vanishes out to sea on a makeshift boat, leaving Goose to deliver the child alone.

We are then privy to the tale of Goose and Hands daughter, Lil' whose strange upbringing causes her to be something of an enticing mystery to a pair of brothers with the unlikely monikers of "Shrimp" and "Kipper." This attention eventually sees her off the marsh in disgrace at age 16, with the younger of the brothers at her side. She and her young, almost-husband, move inland to start a different life together. At last, ninety-two pages in, we meet our strange narrator: Pip. A child born without a cry, much to his parent's dismay, and who, from his first moments out of the womb on, never utters a word. Pip communicates with the outside world by means of a notebook that always hangs about his neck, but we lucky ones are allowed a look inside Pip's head, which is a strange place indeed. He tells his tale in an almost non-linear fashion, alluding to future events as though they have already happened and describing his dreams and fantasies as though they were really happening, only to snap back to reality several pages later. Through his few lucid moments we begin to understand that the pain and suffering that spans generations has compounded to produce young Pip, a walking manifestation of his mother's and grandmother's shadows who is, at the same time, very much his own soul. So, it is through the eyes of a boy who may or may not be mad that we see this tale unfold against the haunting backdrop of the Norfolk salt marshes, a landscape that begins to become a character in and of itself, both sinister and breathtakingly lovely.

SALT is a difficult read, but one that calls upon the reader to rise the challenge, and dive head first into Mr. Page's lace-like prose. Whether or not the world may herald this tome as a classic or not, my copy sits firmly beside Hemingway and Steinbeck, never to budge. Bravo.

4.0 out of 5 stars wonderful service from seller, September 17, 2010

By 

S. Dickson "Bay Island Co." (Beaufort, SC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Salt (Paperback)

Rapid shipping, reasonable price. Thought I was ordering a different book (that was my fault), but enjoyed this one. Would have missed it otherwise.