Night Watch - Softcover

Armstrong, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141000821 ISBN 13: 9780141000824

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 2002

Synopsis

Shimmering with ferocious tension, Night Watch explores the nature of identity and the meaning of home, through a thematically linked collection of stories that take place in the Pacific - on its scattered islands and the swathes of sea that separate them. Kevin Armstrong's perspective is fluid, alternating from that of the islands' indigenous peoples, to travellers passing through, to the sailor who is at home neither at sea nor on land. Driving every story is the twinned search for one home and escape from another.

The characters of Night Watch skirt the uneasy, even treacherous boundaries between what is known and what is longed for, and what is and what might be. In "The Hunga Pass we learn about a Tongan fakaleiti, a boy raised as a girl and then transplanted for a time to the American Midwest. In "The Cane Field we encounter the myriad ways a mother's love for her daughter can be shredded by cultural and political forces in Fiji. And, in "Inside Passage we learn about a seafaring culture, which is as foreign, and more treacherous, than anything encountered on land.

These are haunting tales that dislocate and unsettle, even (and perhaps especially) in their moments of revelation. They are the work of a prodigiously talented young writer.

About this title

About the Author

Kevin Armstrong began writing while an undergraduate at Queen's University. He has received scholarships to the Sage Hill Writing Experience and the Banff Centre for the Arts Fall Studio, and has been awarded grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council. He lives in Vancouver.

From Publishers Weekly

Beach bums, sailors, emigres and island natives are the protagonists of this dark, moody debut collection by a young Canadian. In eight short stories, Armstrong reprises a favorite genre of yesterday-tales of the South Pacific: of Fiji, Australia, Tahiti, Bora Bora. These are faraway places, the stuff of colorful brochures and posters, but the stories owe nothing to James Michener. Sharply told, without glamour or sighing soundtracks, they tell of white men at workaday boating tasks between islands, drinking and smoking pot, as in the title story, or of native tribes, condemned to menial tasks and small hopes. In "The Cane Field," an Australian con man travels the islands, fooling penniless Indian settlers with a newspaper advertisement for an "Indian Wife." "The First Motion of Love" takes the form of a letter, in which an itinerant and possibly dangerous Canadian, a would-be writer, recounts his adventures to a well-known New Zealand author. Armstrong takes a different tack in "The Legend of Kuop," a simple, harsh tale modeled after the legends of Polynesia. In perhaps the most beautiful story, "Drowning in Air," a young islander, Tuelen, is inspired by the beauty of underwater life to carve exquisite wooden sculptures, which his father sees only as tourist merchandise. Armstrong's taste for the enigmatic sometimes leads to obscurity, but his measured perspective and cool eye cast the South Seas in a new light.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Canada
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0141000821
• ISBN 13: 9780141000824
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192