- Paperback: 252 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo; New Ed edition (2 Mar 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 000637977X
- ISBN-13: 978-0006379775
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
50,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #40 in Books > Travel & Holiday > Countries & Regions > Canada
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
From the reviews of The Oatmeal Ark:
‘Fizzing with energy and incident… one of the most original and innovative travel books for years.’
Alexander Frater, Observer
‘A fabulous adventure story, wise, witty and never self-indulgent.’
Alberto Manguel
‘Original and fiercely imaginative.’
Tim Heald, Literary Review
Product Description
‘So polished, so clever, so imaginative, so artful and so innovative…a remarkable, beguiling journey.’ Michael Thompson-Noel, Financial Times
‘We met, my great-grandson and I, more than a century after my death…’
The Reverend Hector Gillean is a ghost. At the start of the last century he built a ship and sailed west from the Hebrides to search for a promised land in the heart of the Canadian wilderness. Two hundred years later his great-grandson retraces the hopeful voyage from Scotland to Nova Scotia, across Canada by water and through three generations of extraordinary family history. A wave-rocked, wind-tossed travel adventure of ghosts and boats ensues. The minister-mariner, a paddle-wheel publisher and a boat-building broadcaster propel their living descendant across the world’s second largest country.
The Oatmeal Ark voyages into the deepest places of the heart, exploring love and hope and loss, and unravels the history of a divided nation whose parts have grown greater than its whole. Its story is at once a record of a remarkable pilgrimage, a fantastical narrative and a glimpse at the universal quest for a better world.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Of all Rory's books The Oatmeal Ark is to my mind the most evocative and heart-searching. With his manifestly unique method of portraying the human situation, Rory juxtaposes the descriptive with tangy observation. He intersperses a range of factual detail with simple conversation, which gives his writing a 'read-aloud' element; it is this sense of sharing that so involves and moves the reader.
The Oatmeal Ark is an interestingly constructed account of a journey, both physical and emotional, in which Beagan follows the lives of his great-grandfather, his grandfather and his father across Canada. In this journey Rory travels easily from the present to the past and back again through clearly conceived characterisations of the previous three generations that provided his Canadian antecedents. In so doing, Rory describes the familiar theme of 'the fine folly of ideals' that create a search for a 'promised land', and it is perhaps this theme of humanity's search for roots and reasons that makes The Oatmeal Ark so compelling a read.
The Oatmeal Ark is an interestingly constructed account of a journey, both physical and emotional, in which Beagan follows the lives of his great-grandfather, his grandfather and his father across Canada. In this journey Rory travels easily from the present to the past and back again through clearly conceived characterisations of the previous three generations that provided his Canadian antecedents. In so doing, Rory describes the familiar theme of 'the fine folly of ideals' that create a search for a 'promised land', and it is perhaps this theme of humanity's search for roots and reasons that makes The Oatmeal Ark so compelling a read.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an imaginative treatment of an epic emigration, and unlike any other travel book I've read. It's remarkable story. Would make a great film.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
...This book was both unusual and extremely wonderful to read. The unusual part was how the author so skillfully transported the reader into both past and present tense so often. And not just to one past period of time, but to different generations gone by, yet still linked to the present. It was very, very well done!
Furthermore, as a Canadian, the whole topic of immigration is fundamental to our Nation's well-being, both in the past as well as the future. While the countries people are immigrating from are always changing, we, as Canadians, depend on immigration for our economical health. I feel this book did such a great job at looking at the stories of different immigrants and tying it in to the author's personal immigration lineage.
It was a real joy to read and I had difficulty putting it down. I re-read it recently and enjoyed it on an even higher level the second time around. Kudos!
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