The Island Walkers - Softcover

John Bemrose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 071956817X ISBN 13: 9780719568176

Publisher: John Murray Publishers, 2005

Synopsis

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

A Finalist for the 2003 Giller Prize

Across a bend of Ontario's Attawan River lies the Island, where, for generations, the Walkers have lived among other mill workers. But in the summer of 1965, with the threat of mill closures looming, the Walkers grapple with their personal crises, just as the rest of the town fights to protect its way of life.

Superbly crafted and deeply moving, this book is at once a love letter to a place, a gripping family saga, and testimony to the emergence of an important new novelist.

About this title

About the Author

A native of Paris, Ontario, John Bemrose lives in Toronto and writes for Maclean's magazine.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

rom The Island Walkers:

She sat in the first desk of the window row: a girl in a pale green sleeveless dress, her slender right arm lying on the desktop, motionless except for a small stroking movement of her fingers on the wood. As Joe flung his gym bag under his seat, the teacher offered a bland hello and the girl turned to glance at him. The shock hit him before he knew what the shock was for, as if his body had recognized her before he did, recognized the face from the bridge, the details he had pretty much forgotten.

He opened his book and stared into it, seeing nothing. He might have been an actor pretending to read while he waited to say his next lines. He was aware of her dress cut in a square at the back, exposing smooth, tanned skin, of the silver bangle she toyed with at her wrist. Her light voice had a trace of something low in it, an impure note that thrilled and obscurely frightened him. He listened to her conversation with a dry mouth, half-resenting her arrival: he had been happy with his life.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Murray Publishers
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 071956817X
• ISBN 13: 9780719568176
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448