The Seal Wife - Softcover

Harrison, Kathryn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007336950 ISBN 13: 9780007336951

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2009

Synopsis

A stunning and hypnotic novel by "a writer of extraordinary gifts" [Tobias Wolff], The Seal Wife tells the story of a young scientist and his consuming love for a woman known as Aleut. In 1915, Bigelow is sent to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage, Alaska, and finds that nothing has prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town of over two thousand men and only a handful of women, of winter nights twenty hours long. And nothing can protect him from obsession-both with a woman, who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and with the weather kite he designs to fly higher than any kite has ever flown before, a kite with which Bigelow plans to penetrate and know not just the sky but the heavens. A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and outside conventions. Harrison brilliantly re-creates the Alaskan frontier during the period of the first World War and in lyrical prose explores the interior landscape of the psyche and human emotions - a landscape eerily continuous with the splendor and terror of the frozen frontier, the storms that blow over the earth and its face.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Stunning, hypnotic, spare, The Seal Wife is the masterly new novel by Kathryn Harrison, ?a writer of extraordinary gifts? (Tobias Wolff). Set in Alaska in 1915, it tells the story of a young scientist?s consuming love for a woman known as the Aleut, a woman who never speaks, who refuses to reveal so much as her name.

Born and educated in midwestern cities, Bigelow is sent north by the United States government to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage. But what could have prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town with more than two thousand men and only a handful of women, or for winter nights twenty hours long? And what can protect him from obsession?obsession with a woman who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and obsession with the weather kite he invents, a kite he hopes will fly higher than any has ever flown before and will penetrate the secrets of the heavens?

A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and convention. As she brilliantly reimagines the terrain of the Alaskan frontier during the period of the First World War, Harrison, a ?master of her material? (Mary Gordon), also evokes early efforts to chart the weather and reveals the interior realm of the psyche and emotions?a human landscape that, in its splendor and terror, is profoundly and eerily reminiscent of the frozen frontier and the storms that scour its face.

From the Back Cover

“Mesmerizing...harrowing in its emotional intensity, haunting in its evocation of a distant time and place.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Superb, perfect, one might even say—soaring.” —The Seattle Times

“Lyrical passages...reads like profound poetry...the most enterprising and successful portrait of a man in heat by a female writer since Joyce Carol Oates’ tumultuously orgasmic What I Lived For.” —Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

“Intricately wrought...Harrison imbues her solitary silence with a stately air of self-possession.” —Maria Russo, The New York Times Book Review

“This...mesmerizing tale is dizzying in intensity; its startling story twists are borne along by prose as austere and powerful as Alaska’s icescape. The novel’s undertow of anguish will resonate with anyone who has tried to make sense of desire....Chilled to perfection.” —People

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0007336950
• ISBN 13: 9780007336951
• Binding: Print on Demand (Paperback)
• Number of pages: 240