- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; Aus/SA/OM Only Ed edition (6 Nov 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007113153
- ISBN-13: 978-0007113156
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Review
‘A fine novel about family, identity and loss. A gorgeous debut.’ US Weekly
‘Bacon brings the acute eye of a cartographer to this engrossing gazeteer about survival, heartache and the frayed edges of memory.’ LA Times
Product Description
A rich and evocative novel of immigrant families, and the effect that rootlessness has down the generations.
A young fisherman, having read through every book in his corner of Scotland, left home to travel, as far away from the sea as possible, and ended up in Saskatchewan, Canada. He married a local farmer’s daughter, and they lived ‘quiet, braided lives’ building their roots, their family, their farm, until they were killed in an accident.
Their children scattered. Their daughter, rootless, moved into the anonymity of a town and, pregnant, married another immigrant. And her daughter flees the family legacy, and the coldness, to Paris, where an Anglo-Turkish boy introduces her to all the colour she has been missing – and to another immigrant culture.
The loss of one culture and confrontation with a new one affects all the characters. Lost Geography shines a new light on the struggles and triumphs of immigrant life.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Spanning most of the 20th century, this story traces the lives of four generations of one family as their roots spread from the remote fishing areas of Scotland to the Canadian prairies to Toronto to Paris and finally to New York, led by often tragic events that lead to migration. With so much ground to cover - literally - it is difficult to get a full appreciation of each time period and country. The inherent transience that is migration is reflected in this fact. Perhaps that is Charlotte Bacon's objective?
The destinations in the story do not tend to have an inherent randomness. Often dramatic and tragic events lead to each migratory movement. One can feel the gravitational pull exerted by the successive movements of the strands of this family, the inevitable migration that is almost predestined to happen. However, I found it difficult to become immersed in each new destination. With so many cultural divides to cross, perhaps this was inevitable.
In places the story feels predictable. For instance, the Scottish fisherman's (who longed to be as far away from the sea he was brought up beside) granddaughter has a yearning for the sea despite being brought up in Toronto. The sentimentality is overwrought here too, because the granddaughter has her grandfather's looks. Each character brought to the story has their own migratory background. Are migrants naturally drawn towards each other, given that they share a sense of "homelessness"?
Trying to follow the events of a young Scottish man and his future generations as they first plant and then uproot themselves evokes in me the questions of migration and what makes a place "home".
Overall I enjoyed the book, particularly the earlier sections based in Canada. In parts it felt a little contrived and it became mildly less satisfying as the book progressed to its conclusion, but enjoyable nonetheless. Three stars.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This quickly became one of my favourite all time novels. Bought on my birthday last year when I revisted Dunedin, where an Orcadian forebearer first set foot in this country mid-19th century, this novel seemed to address the ambitiousness of his journey.
I did not want to turn to the last page. I also wanted to pack a bag and get going somewhere!
Charlotte Bacon writes beautifully and gives the family novel a good shake. It's the story of how people have to leave home sometimes to find home. Her characters wander the globe, desperately or optimistically. This is how the New World was populated, the colonies grew strong, and how the Old World is reinvigorated when we return to our roots. In my country we are all descendants of such wanderers - this novel serves as an emblem to their heritage.
I did not want to turn to the last page. I also wanted to pack a bag and get going somewhere!
Charlotte Bacon writes beautifully and gives the family novel a good shake. It's the story of how people have to leave home sometimes to find home. Her characters wander the globe, desperately or optimistically. This is how the New World was populated, the colonies grew strong, and how the Old World is reinvigorated when we return to our roots. In my country we are all descendants of such wanderers - this novel serves as an emblem to their heritage.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
11 reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Finding one's place on the map...
21 July 2000
Format:Hardcover
Images of maps, bits of geography float through this excellent story of four generations of women--Margaret, Hilda, Danielle, and Sophia. Margaret is a nurse in Saskatchewan when she meets her future husband Davis, a Scots immigrant searching for his fortune in the new world. Davis, felled by a fever, changes course and settles down as a farmer-husband-parent. Daughter Hilda chooses to move onto Toronto where she makes a different kind of life with an antiques dealer. Margaret's granddaughter Danielle leaves her mother Hilda and migrates to Paris where she meets Osman, a dealer in antique oriental rugs. After Danielle dies, Osman and their two children Sasha and Sophia move to New York to begin again.
On the surface, the stories of these women's lives do not contain obvious morals or seem to have a purpose other than their recounting. However, this is a tale not only of shifting landscape, but of the search for one's place in the geography of the heart. It puts me in mind of the short-story novels of Alice Munro--'Friend of My Youth' or 'Lives of Girls and Women.' The richness of the text is like a Bazaar. Colorful and original images abound--the grandmother who is bent like a cipher and feels like a raspy husk when she hugs you; the former library-cum crater, filled with mushrooms feeding on mouldering books and lined with Queen Anne's Lace; the little boxes filled with copper pennies turned green, stacked and hidden behind the old kitchen stove--and rugs, maps, and mellow old wooden antiques. Bacon's writing is as rich as the antique Yatak pictured on the book jacket.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Beautifully written story!
10 May 2000
Format:Hardcover
Lost Geography is a beautifully written book. The discriptions of place, and the thoughts of each character are so poetic and unique it took my breath away. It is a generational story about the way we fall in love, how fate and place and those we meet shape us, how our plans may get changed but life can lead us to the unexpected, that even through pain there is joy. Charlotte Bacon weaves us a tapestry with her words and characters. You should read it.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
More than just Geographically Lost
8 Sep 2000
Format:Hardcover
I really wanted to like this book. It's episodic expanse of multi-generational portraits were like looking in an old photo album of family pictures. Each character was interesting enough. However, like looking at the old photos, nothing much actually happened in the book. I kept expecting that events would also lead to a sense of the profound. Ultimately, this only achieved a sense of the mundane. After reading through these 259 pages, I felt like I'd labored through an 800-page Russian novel or the collected short stories of Mavis Gallant. I suppose in what was supposed to be a true-to-life portrait, the sudden deaths were to reveal the meaning of life rather than simply being jarring. And the ending left me clueless. What was that? What is one supposed to get from standing in the window other than the book is over with the characters left standing in the windows? If there was a hidden profundity in the ending, I totally missed it. Perhaps this is a book that would resonate more with a woman than a man. If you spend the time with this, I hope you find it a more satisfying read than I. -- And if you get the ending, why not email me to let me in on what I should have gotten? BuddyBipkin@excite.com
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