Customer Reviews

Through Black Spruce

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Through Black Spruce was chosen as the winner of this year's Giller Prize, the top Canadian book award. The panel of 3 that chose it included Margaret Attwood and Colm Toibin (IMPAC Award winner). I hoped this meant I was in safe hands with the recommendation.

I had nothing to worry about. I found Boyden to be an excellent storyteller.

Annie, a young Cree woman from very far northern Ontario (look Moosonee up on the map) has returned to her home town to escape recent events. She gets into the habit of visiting her coma ridden uncle at the hospital for several hours each night.

At this point two story lines emerge. Every second chapter is narrated by Annie as she relates her recent experiences to her uncle. She wonders if he can hear her.

Every other chapter is narrated by Uncle Will as we discover the sequence of events that lead to his current state.

Both storylines are very different and both are compelling. It is difficult to decide which one I liked better. The stories are fluid and both action packed.

Annie, who has lived near Moosonee all her life goes to Toronto with a friend for a vacation with the hope of finding information about her missing sister, Suzanne. Annie and her family are very concerned that Suzanne has met an untimely end. Suzanne is very beautiful and they know from magazines that she has done high fashion modelling. She left Moosonee with an unsavoury character and has certainly gotten into some osrt of trouble.

Annie becomes obsessed with finding her sister and ends up becoming entwined in the world of high fashion and drugs. She also does some modelling and becomes very involved with a world of privilege in Montreal and New York.

Uncle Will's story revolves around his conflict with a local drug dealer named Marius. Marius believes Will has informed on him to the police. Will is terrorized by Marius and must learn to fight back.

Ultimately the story lines intersect and events come to a head.

This is a very quick and fast moving read and I found it to be consistently entertaining. I definitely recommend it.

Canada is an unexplored literary continent for me. Some people try to change that, as if I had excessive spare time. The downside of the amazon friends system is that I buy more books than I can possibly digest. (And then amazon goes and punishes the system that helps them earn their bucks.)
Anyway, strictly speaking this book is different because it was a gift. I never heard of it before. Even Canadian literary prize winners are not easily known to me. I had to struggle through the first few chapters until I believed: yes, this is a genuine voice and it is worth staying with it for 400 pages*. I had initially mistaken it for an exercise in exotic quaintness, with drinking bush pilots and non speaking Indians (had that in Cuckoo Nest already) and disappeared models and obese nurses.
(*If you think that is normal, you overestimate my patience! This novel is a current Canadian prize winner. 2009, I believe. For comparison: Germany has a German Book Prize since a few years. From the beginnings I have honestly tried to stay with the times and always tried to read the best novel of the year, and truly, there was not a single one that I could finish.)

No, no, this one here is a genuine crime story, a murder book, around a fragment of a Romeo and Juliet core tale, set among Cree Indians in the North and in the big cities. The narrative device is ingenious: the bush pilot is in coma and seems to tell his chapters like in a trance, while his niece tells him things, in alternating chapters, for therapeutic purposes. It is supposed to make him come back to life.
Our opposing families are the Birds, trappers and hunters, and the Netmakers, bootleggers, smugglers, drug dealers, Hells Angels. The epos is fed to us in short chapters, combining present tense events (the hospital, the patient etc) with the recollections from various times.

The young couple has gone south, to the big cities, and disappeared. She had become a short-lived shooting star in the model scene, with her exotic good looks, and he was also different from his gangster clan, looking like Johnny Depp, and into arts. Now they are gone. Her sister Annie is the narrator. She had gone searching for the missing. That is one main strand of the narrative. It leads her from Toronto and Montreal to Manhattan and she dives into the model, club and drug world.
Her uncle's narration is more interesting. His world is the poverty of his people and survival in the wilderness. (Do mosquitoes get drunk with the blood of drunken men?)
`Through Black Spruce' is volume 2 in a trilogy, following WW1 novel `Three Day Road'. Will is a son of one of the snipers who are the heroes of vol1. The link between the 2 volumes is the gun that sniper Xavier leaves to his son Will. The gun plays a major part as a prop in the story. Enough said. Volume 3 is pending.
I will most certainly go and look for volume 1.

Both narratives share the background of the harsh life in the North and the violence of race and sex relations. Both also share the beauty of nature.
One of my last book reviews was about stories set in the extreme south of the American continent (Coloane's Tierra del Fuego). The similarities are partly striking, but of course not really surprising. (Coloane as well as Boyden use a stranded whale's skeleton as a prop for their plots. Coincidence, or are low latitude shores full of them?)

As we have learned from many sources, old Indian men are up to the most surprising philosophical insights. Will meets an old man and tells him of his troubles, and then he gets this as a response: Wherever you go, there you are. Will is not happy with that, he wanted more. But there you are.

Every time I go to Canada, I buy a Canadian book. This one appealed because of the title and the awards that it won. Would it deliver or not? The answer is a resounding YES on delivery. As I said, I could hardly put it down although I work full time where I don't have time to read. Boyden's prose is outstanding and there was enough Native dialog and information to give me a flavor without beating me over the head. It was at once a mystery and a tretis on life and relationships. Thought provoking with characters that you cared about without feeling he was manipulating your emotions. He is also superb at finding and keeping a beautiful balance within the story. Bravo!

An incredible follow-up to Joseph Boyden's powerful novel Three Day Road. Fans of that novel and readers new to the works of Joseph Boyden will be similarly impressed and blown over.

Through Black Spruce tells the story of two people, each on their own journey, searching for forgiveness, a sense of identity and belonging, and ultimately redemption. It begins with one of the more gripping openings in recent memory and doesn't ease its grip on the reader until the final page.

It definitely deserves the Giller Award it won, as well as every other award that will without a doubt come its way.

Do yourself a favor: get this book!

... are assigned to weight categories -- heavy, light-heavy, middleweight, welterweight, bantam, etc. -- and championships are earned against opponents of the same weight. Maybe that's how it should be for novels. Two categories would be enough for starters: Heavy and Light. 1) The heavies would include - roughly- those novels commonly called classics, which people still read after decades or centuries, and those novels current readers would wager will still be read after future decades or centuries. Some readers tend to shun such books once they've escaped the educational mills. Some of these books are hard going for most of us. 2) The lights are all the rest. But the problem is that, unlike training gyms for boxers, libraries and bookstores don't have dependable scales ...

"Through Black Spruce" seems to me to be a 'pretty good' lightweight novel. I don't mean sweetness and light. It's a grim story; people get murdered and beaten into comas in it, and the 'facts' are withheld from the reader in the style of crime/mystery genre novels. The ugliness it portrays is more tangible and visible than the beauty, whether that beauty is of Nature or of the two Indian Princess sisters who roam recklessly from their Cree village in northern Ontario to Montreal and New York. That the sisters are beautiful is what we are bluntly told; that their lives become ugly with drugs, cruelty, violence, and sexual adventurism is more than merely told. It's shown almost graphically. No, the atmosphere of "Black Spruce" is anything but light. This is a dark, dark novel depicting the poverty and cultural degradation of First Nation peoples in slick modern Canada. The contrasts are ghastly between Moosonee and Montreal, between staggering blind drunkenness in the snowdrifts and silken sexcapades on Ecstasy in a Manhatten penthouse, between fear of starving or freezing in the next storm and the fear of being stalked by hired mob enforcers.

The narrative structure of the novel is a lot simpler than some reviews have suggested. In a hospital room in the remote north, Will Bird, a Cree bush pilot on the edge of being 'old school' in his Indian ways, lies in an unexplained coma from which he's not expected to recover. His niece Annie, one of the fashion model Indian Princess sisters, visits him daily. In alternating chapters, Annie slowly tells her comatose uncle about her frightening adventures in the cities, in hopes that her words will stimulate him to reawaken, while Will Bird thinks or projects his own life story and its lessons to his nieces. Plenty of suspense: will Bird awaken at all? will the missing niece, Suzanne, be found alive? will Annie resolve her Indian identity? will the reader ever learn what happened? In a sense, that last item isn't suspenseful enough; the writing is such that I was always sure the whole story would be told, one way or another everything would get resolved, all the pieces of the mystery would fall in place in time to let the story wrap itself up. That too-thorough resolution cheapened the narrative for me. The denouement was so because the author always knew it would be so. Too tidy! More contrived than organic!

In terms of its gritty pessimism, "Through Black Spruce" reminds me of the Icelandic detective fiction of Arnulfur Indridason. Both Indridason and Joseph Boyden portray hard-bitten, frost-bitten characters scratching their survival on thin soil under glowering clouds. Both writers offer us young women in scary live styles. Drugs and booze are endemic in both communities. Both hunter/pilot Bird and detective Erlendur are guilt-haunted survivors. Boyden, I think, aspires more. He aims to transcend genre fiction, to 'fight above his weight category,' to write something weightier than simple popular fiction. I'd say he comes close.

"...We may think the past as something we don't need. But that's not true - not to my mind." *)

History is front and centre of Joseph Boyden's second novel, "Through Black Spruce". Loosely a follow-up to his first, Three Day Road - the story of two young Cree trackers fighting in World War I - this story looks at history in a very personal, intimate way. Will and Annie Bird, the two narrative voices, are the son and granddaughter of Xavier Bird, one of the three central characters in the earlier book. Distinct in their approaches to their individual story, told in alternating chapters, they are also intricately connected. As the two "confessions" to each other unfold, they increasingly interweave into one multi-layered tapestry.

Will, an experienced trapper and bush pilot, lies in a coma in the hospital of Moosonee, a James Bay community in northern Ontario. Very soon we realize that only one of two possible events can have landed him in this state: another crash with his small bush plane or another big fight with Marius, the bully and controlling local drug lord and prominent member of the Netmaker family. The Birds and the Netmaker families have more than one reasons to be enemies and, recently, much had to do with Will's other niece, the stunningly beautiful Suzanne, who took off with Marius' brother; both have disappeared without a trace since. Annie, recently returned from several months down south, sits by her uncle's side and, speaking softly to his ear, hopes to somehow connect with him and to bring him back to the waking world.

While in his deep sleep, Will's mind is in a state of active dreaming, looking back on his life. Following the twisting and winding ways of memory lane, he digs deep into his past, reviewing and reassessing his hopes and failures, his loves and losses and, eventually the moments of happiness and peace. A sense of urgency compels him to share his life's story and all its secrets with his two beloved nieces. Unbeknownst to Annie, of course, who has her own reasons to reflect on recent experiences. After some reluctance to talk to a comatose, Annie in turn describes to her uncle the events of the last months that took her to Toronto, Montreal and to New York City and, eventually, brought her back to Moosonee.

Whereas Will is intimately connected to the 'old ways' and the constant struggle between traditional and modern worlds in this remote part of the Canadian landscape, Annie lives with between the two realities. Tempted by an invitation, she gave in to the powerful lure of the southern world of the big cities, the excitements and opportunities that they hold for the enterprising young. Annie has another important reason to head south. She is following the trail of her missing sister, who, according to rumours, had made it big in the world of fashion modeling. In Toronto, Annie comes across a group of urban 'Indians' who provide her with the first clues as to Suzanne's whereabouts. Following Annie, Gordon, AKA Painted Tongue, is sent by the group's elder on a mission of his own. Through Annie's eyes and experiences we are introduced into both the desolate life of urban 'Indians' living at the margins of society as well as the glamour of fashion models and their handlers, especially in New York City. Still, Annie is increasingly torn between her old and new life. Boyden very skilfully evokes and contrasts the two worlds while not shying away from exposing the shallowness of glamour, the brutality of drug trafficking, the dependency on alcohol or drugs and the human frailties that are found in both societies, in each with different parameters and consequences.

The novel's present is set in the northern Ontario countryside and most of the characters are, fundamentally, grounded in this stunningly beautiful, untouched land, amongst its rivers and lakes, its flora and fauna. Will uses the black spruce as a recurrent theme for the power of the forest that demands respect and admiration - an almost mystical, living element in the mind of the lonely hunter. The strong restorative power of this landscape for those who are open to its natural splendour is empathetically portrayed. Both Will and Annie are deeply drawn to it. One of the most emotionally engaging passages describes Will's survival on Akimiski Island, the largest island in James Bay. Richly drawn scenes of him coming upon a whale skeleton on the beach or watching a polar bear fall through the ceiling of his little hut, bring out the physical challenges and the even deeper emotional ones. These and other scenes, equally beautifully conveyed in Boyden's expressive prose, turn into a realization of pivotal importance in Will's existence and they may bring him hope to reconnect with the present reality.

Boyden's love for the natural beauty of this landscape, his intimate knowledge of the traditional ways of the Cree speak out of every sentence.While showing much empathy and compassion for his charactes, his portrayals are realistic and reflect their complexities. In addition to Will and Annie, who stand out as the most richly developed and engaging personalities, there are others, friends and family, loves of past and present, and while less developed they are nevertheless intriguing and their interactions with the two narrators compelling. There is much dramatic flow and tension in the story, most sections are real page-turners. Overall, this is a well-paced novel that is hard to put down. Some commentators have expressed disappointment with the novel's ending. While I agree to some degree, the conclusion is one of only a few possible and consistent ones.
For me, it is without doubt one of the most engaging and beautifully written novels I have read in quite a long time. [Friederike Knabe]

*) Boyden in an interview with Canadian tv station CTV.

This is one of the best novels I've read this year. I found the author's portrayal of northern Ontario to be both hauntingly sad and beautiful. In fact, the characters in the novel could be described similarly. The story of Annie and her uncle seem to take similar paths, albeit in different times and different places.

A great read and certainly this book was deserving of the Giller prize.

A lovely book...no one seems to have mentioned that Will is the son of the protagonist of Three Day Road...Does Mr. Boyden have plans for a Louise Erdrich kind of opus? I hope so!

I intended to wait for the paperback issue, but couldn't put it off any longer, and succumbed to buying the hardcover on sale. After Three Day Road, I wanted to see what Mr. Boyden would do next. He is clearly coming into his own as a writer: compelling descriptions of life in northern aboriginal communities, of big city life as an outsider, the powerfully drawn characters. Although I generally find the "alternating voices" narrative distracting, I enjoyed it in this book, it flowed well.

There were some weaknesses in plot and structure: as other readers have mentioned, the story goes on a bit longer than necessary and some devices are used once too often (Annie being saved...), and the ending was, well Hollywood. This could be the base of a good movie script - but would Hollywood bite? Still there are moments when I was astonished, carried away by Mr. Boyden's skill, and I dreaded turning the last page. Now I have to wait for his next book...

In Joseph Boyden's mesmerizing and beautifully-rendered second novel - a follow-up to Three Day Road--former bush pilot Will Bird reflects, "Something's there, through the black spruce, just on the other side. I can't see it yet, though..."

The "something" is a strange place in the road: the place between traditional ways of life and modernity, between nature and the insidious effects of the drug culture, between life and death. There are two stories that are expertly interwoven here: the story of Will, deep in a coma, who reflects on the adventures and tribulations of his life and what has led him to this hospital bed. And the story of Annie, his niece, who is on a quest to find her missing sister, a one-time top fashion model in New York City who has lived the high life in every sense of the word.

Joseph Boyden captures the Cree language and sensibility and there are truly gorgeous and memorable moments in this book such as Will's connection with an aging bear sow, who, like Will, is experiencing "a world of loss". Boyden breathes fresh air into the life of this aging hunter who is losing his designation as the "bush man in this town" and who deplores the blood feuds and drug dealing that have taken hold of his community.

Annie, too, is lost in the foreign world of high stakes modeling in New York - where she ends up in her search for her sister - a high-octane world where human connections mean little and the drug Ecstasy rules the day. After being summoned back home, she and Will strive to rescue each other through the bracing honesty of confessing their experiences.

This gripping novel - taking us from a sterile hospital room to the primordial edges of the secluded James Bay, from the northern backwoods of Ontario to the glittering high-rises of the Big Apple - only falters at the end, with a "tie it all together" ending that is unworthy of the rest of the book. It's a stunning book, worthy of the Scotibank Giller Prize it so richly earned.