Customer Reviews

The Seal Wife: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There's always a feeling of discomfort when reading a Kathryn Harrison book and "The Seal Wife" is no exception. It's set in Alaska in 1915, where winters are long and cold, mosquitoes are plentiful, and there are very few women. And so when Bigelow Greene, age 26, is sent there by the government to set up a weather station in Anchorage, he is lonely and disoriented. There's startling beauty here and a sense of isolation. Bigelow yearns for a woman and soon begins a relationship with a native woman he knows only as "The Aleut". He's completely obsessed with her, and adores her strength, her unpretentious sensuality and complete self-possession. The writing itself is sensual too; from the descriptions of how the woman butchers animals, to the erotic details of their coupling. The fact that she never speaks only adds to his passion for her. When she moves away, he is devastated.

Much of the book details this period of his isolation, in which he plunges himself into his work, building a unique kite which holds instruments and carefully measures the weather conditions. His need for a woman is overwhelming though and the reader feels his pain and isolation as he attempts to satisfy his raging feelings. Eventually, he connects with another women, who is also mute. Her other characteristics disgust him however. How this all plays out is fascinating and forced me to continue reading this spare 256-page book all the way through in a very short time.

The reader gets to know Bigelow intimately. I felt I was right there with him as he struggled to understand the weather, the landscape and his own emotional needs. There's a constant feeling of isolation and a metaphorical statement about the human condition. It's fascinating. And even though I've come to expect different and innovative settings for Ms. Harrison's novels, this one is unique in focusing entirely on one character's point of view. The result is an unsettling portrait of loneliness and alienation. Naturally I expected an unhappy conclusion. I was wrong. It was a pleasure to be smiling wistfully as I turned the last page.

Kathryn Harrison's THE SEAL WIFE is far and away her finest work, and one of the finest works of fiction published this year. Written in a very spare style, Harrison doesn't waste a word, a paragraph or a chapter in telling this story of a US government scientist sent to the wilds of Alaska in 1915. Bigelow's assignment is to map the weather patterns of the area, where railroads and infrastructure are to be built, extracting the riches of gold, furs and other precious commodities. Bigelow embarks upon an ambitious quest to construct the biggest kite known, which will aid him in understanding the changeable nature of the region's weather. The kite itself becomes a metaphor for a man's quest for unattainable love, his desire to conquer nature, and the consequences of reaching too far outside one's known experiences in life.

Bigelow has three relationships through the course of the story: one with the kite, which consumes not only his intellect and emotions, but great periods of his time every day; a physical and strangely emotionally distant relationship with an Aleut woman whose name and background he never knows fully. Thirdly, he has another physical and highly emotional liaison with a young woman who communicates only through song.

Harrison's descriptions of the Alaskan frontier with all its vastness, great white blankets of snow and ice, and the long stretches of light and darkness bring the reader into Bigelow's setting like no other novel I can remember.

THE SEAL WIFE is the finest example of the novelist's craft! I would really, really like to see her write into a screenplay. This is a story of great drama veiled by the whiteness of Alaska, and the loneliness of a man's soul. Beautifully done, Kathryn Harrison!!

What more is there to say? As I read it, I forgot a person had created it. The events and characters are so real. I'm having difficulty putting my feelings about this book into words. It's as if the book existed without an author; her presence is nowhere felt, but everything that happens in the book is intensely true. I was particularly touched by the ending.

I enjoyed Harrison's book "The Binding Chair," too, but it was more realistic and more obviously "written." This one seems dreamed.

Extremities define - they map out the boundaries of continents and nations, of worlds, and of our bodies. There are several extremities at work in Kathryn Harrison's novel - and the unforgiving Alaskan weather is one of them. The central character, a meteorologist named Bigelow, is sent to Anchorage in 1915 in order to begin recording weather data for the US government. He is at first excited by the prospect - both by its frontier location and by his potentially pioneering work - but he soon falls prey to forces beyond his control, both in his heart and in his physical environment.

Bigelow finds himself both physically and emotionally hammered by the isolation enforced upon him by his surroundings. He thinks he is prepared for the time-toppling 20-hour winter nights and the seemingly endless days of the summer months - he soon finds that he is sinking deeper and deeper into loneliness. He finds a bit of solace in the company of a native woman - known simply as the Aleut woman, her name never being revealed to either the reader or Bigelow - and he becomes more and more obsessed with her silence. She never speaks a word to him - the only noises he ever hears from her are her quiet moans during sex. Rather than being driven away by this, he is drawn more and more to her because of it. When she suddenly disappears - without an explanation of where she's going or when or if she'll return - his life is thrown into chaos.

He soon finds another woman with whom he becomes infatuated - she sings, accompanying the silent films that are shown periodically in a tent, projected onto a sheet. She is as mysterious as the Aleut woman - it takes quite a bit of detective work on Bigelow's part for him to discover her name and where she lives. When he does manage to meet her, he is struck by a strange parallel to the Aleut woman - this girl is also silent, except for her songs. She communicates with him by way of a pencil and paper, and lets him know that she can't speak - she can sing, but only the words written by others. She cannot even use song to communicate her own thoughts.

... I think that Harrison has endowed both of them with a lot of character and, in their own ways, a lot of things to say. This is particularly true of the Aleut woman - for a character that never utters a word (none of her thoughts are ever presented, either), this reader came away with a deep sense of her personality. She is a uniquely strong character - she lives her life as she chooses, and no one (especially Bigelow) is going to dictate what she should or shouldn't do. The method he finally finds of communicating with her, of touching her on a deeper level, is a memorable one - I'll leave it for the potential reader to discover what that is.

Bigelow himself is a less-than-admirable character, albeit a sympathetic one - meaning that I didn't necessarily like him as a person, or approve of his methods of dealing with those around him, but that I could understand how extenuating circumstances (as well as what was revealed of his upbringing) had formed him into the person depicted here on these pages.

Overall, I found the book to be compelling and entertaining - and I thought the style with which Harrison composed the novel was perfect for the story and setting. The author has a great gift for images: `God exhaling clouds of geese' (p.224); and `Like a key, the thought of her eluding him turns in his flesh' (p. 29). This is great writing.

Kathryn Harrison's The Seal Wife is quite an intense read. It is the story of Bigelow Greene, a young man who moves to Alaska in 1915 to establish a weather station. He becomes obsessed with a silent Aleut woman he becomes sexually involved with and when she mysteriously disappears, his world, and perhaps his sanity begin to crumble. He becomes involved with another silent woman and his simple life grows more and more complex. The brutal Alaskan landscape serves as an excellent backdrop for this novel and its language. The Seal Wife is certainly not for the faint of heart--Bigelow is obsessed with sex and Harrison is not afraid to delve deeply into that obsession. If you can take that, try this intense read. It's hard to put down.

In this sparce but richly woven tale of ALASKA circa 1915, KATHRYN HARRISON not only gives us history but looks right into obsession, hard work and motivation to achieve, erotic desire and fulfillment, loneliness, treachery, pain, friendship, loss, recovery --- all the things that give life meaning. Brilliantly told yet easily accessible, HARRISON wastes not one word of her short novel. It's no secret that critics loathe HARRISON, perhaps personal reasons, I don't know or care. But for us just-love-a-good-read buyers, she's TOP OF THE LINE.

Bigelow Greene, a twenty six year-old meteorologist from the Midwest, is hired by the Weather Bureau in 1915 and sent to the frontier boomtown of Anchorage, Alaska, to set up an observation station. Unfortunately, due to the department's new budget, the young man barely earns a living wage. He must find additional work to survive life in the harsh Arctic climate, where below freezing temperatures and 20 hour-long winter nights present a major challenge to one's sanity. "The Alaskan sun remains unknowable, every day a new prank, pulling along its bows and parhelia and other odd, errant optical paraphernalia, too lazy and distracted to achieve altitude, rolling along the tops of mountains, infusing the icy fog with a strange and sullen greeny glow." In his solitude, Bigelow sees all matter of surreal phenomena from his observatory windows which he would have never before called weather. He questions whether he can survive here. He doesn't think he has mastered the "required optimism" to do so. Descriptions of the physical world, like the one above, provoke one to wonder whether the landscape is depicted from a real life perspective or from an emotional one, a reflection of Bigelow's inner world?

There is a woman, called the Aleut, who lives in a frame house on the mud flats outside of Anchorage. Bigelow becomes obsessed with her. He finds her beautiful. He visits her. They drink tea, share meals, have sex. She bathes. He watches. They never talk. He knows nothing about the woman, about her life, her history, not even her name. Although he speaks to her, he never knows whether she understands him. However, she allows him to watch her "as intently, as much and as long, as he wants and the reason for this comes to him one night. She is self-possessed. She possesses herself." This makes him want her all the more. She becomes necessary to him. Then, one morning, she is gone. And he is shattered.

Bigelow, begins to drink and look for sexual pleasure with other women, mostly local prostitutes, to ease his pain. He is devastated by the Aleut's disappearance. He temporarily becomes involved with a shopkeeper's daughter, who sings, but is unable to speak. She stammers so violently that she communicates only through written notes. However, his fixation with the missing Inuit woman continues and follows him into his dreams. An introverted, sensitive man, Bigelow does not fit in with the coarser men from town and so he is left virtually alone.

The young scientist originally accepted his low paying job because it would give him the opportunity to prove a meteorological theory he had long been obsessed with. He hypothesizes that a great current of air sweeps in a circular fashion from the poles to the equator and back again, causing the air high over the poles to be warm, and the air over the equator cold. His dual obsessions with the meteorological project and with the Aleut woman continually vie for first place in his mind and with his energy. He designs and constructs an enormous kite to take temperature readings thousands of feet above the earth, which will enable him to prove his theory. The kite and his documentation also serve to distract him from his emotional pain and loneliness. The narrative focuses as much on Bigelow's inner obsession with the Aleut woman, as on his professional passion for charting the weather, with "recording a narrative that unfolds invisibly to most people." Unbeknownst to Bigelow, his newfound success with the kite has made a name for him in Anchorage as a scientific innovator. No matter how successful his work is, however, he finds no peace of mind.

"The Seal Wife," is a finely detailed, well-researched historical fiction that concerns the development of scientific technology before WWI, turn-of-the-century Alaska, and the growth of one man's character. Kathryn Harrison's language is richly metaphorical, especially when she describes the Alaskan landscape as seen through Bigelow's eyes. Her characters, especially the women, are of mythological proportion, more archetypical than three dimensional, and extremely mysterious - although I find Bigelow to be quite realistic. I am a big fan of Ms. Harrison's and while this is an excellent novel, I do prefer her more contemporary work.
JANA

Passionate and beautifully written, but when the book veered from the relationship between the protagonist Bigelow and the Aleut woman it was not quite as compelling for me. I found all the characters fascinating - how could you not with Harrison's rich earthy descriptive storytelling, but I couldn't sustain interest in his work - and that takes up a good deal of the book.

Kathryn Harrison, author of "The Kiss" and "The Binding Chair," underscores her reputation as a writer of compelling fiction with this tale of passion and obsession on the desolate Alaskan frontier. Fred Stella provides a superior reading.

It is 1915 when Bigelow, a young scientist, is dispatched to build a weather observatory in Anchorage. He is optimistic and enthusiastic, little realizing what life will be like in an arctic railroad town peopled by men and precious few women. The nights are endless and lonely.

Before long he is held sway by a seemingly unknowable woman, Aleut. She is not his only obsession - he designs a kite intended to fly higher than any kite has ever flown.

Harrison's recreation of an icy landscape in all its beauty and danger is spectacular. Stella's reading illuminates that world and her words.

- Gail Cooke

The Seal Wife by Kathryn Harrison reads with the fierce swiftness of a sled ride across the frozen tundra; while the sun brazes across the pages barely peaking in, with little to no warmth offered. While Ms. Harrison has branded her book, a Novel, I am so temped to call this a Novella. The tone and pace resemble the later including the three parts it is broken into. The plight of Bigelow becomes apparent as he is plunked down in Anchorage just before there is anything to write home about. Tracks are just being laid in neighboring towns and the only commerce is furs, drinking, and prostitution. To Bigelow's credit, he does not fall so easily into the crevice of prostitution; although, his obsession with the Aleut woman and the way he handles the relationship definitely skirts the line. I could easily see a movie coming out of this book, and if done the right way, it would really be stunning. This is a testament to the clear visionary writing that captures the spare desperation of the land. A description of the Aleut woman's shanty; that she lives among a lake of mud with only wooden planks to walk on and on the far edge of town, evokes an image of the sun bearing down on watery mud; pure misery. Yet there is beauty within her simple life and Bigelow latches on to that beauty almost like a ribbon on an immense kite; maybe, resembling the weather kite that Bigelow builds. When the Aleut woman goes away the raw desperation of Bigelow literally rises from the pages and it is impossible not to feel his despair.

There are so many things to like about this Novella. I wanted it to go on and on. Weather is a key character as well that shapes the characters and their moods. The weather kite that Bigelow builds becomes a grand expedition into the atmosphere and its own story unfolds with a magestic muslin train of fabric, dreamery and light. Bigelow manages to win over the whole town with his kite and he becomes a bit of a mythical warrior capable of harnessing the cold and wind.

When Bigelow falls for the town's version of Little House on the Prairie's Nellie, there is some real humor to be had at his expense, no doubt. All the while this obsession for the Aleut woman sits simmering. The love he has for her almost at times seems so idiosyncratic; that she never speaks and yet he projects so much onto her; how can he be communicating with her at all? Yet, Harrison does afford glimmers of hope, for Bigelow is so immersed in trying to please the Aleut woman, and in trying to figure her out, that he pulls himself out of a possible tone of not listening, and not caring; rather, his feelings are exactly the opposite. I recommend this book on any day, and know that it will be over just as it has begun; that's the way with great writing like this; dazzling the reader with a sun dance one minute, then flying high and out of reach the next.