clarrro's review
4.0
Highly pleasurable to read and it really made me want to go sailing. The descriptions were beautiful and a bit too much perhaps. It really picked up in the end. For my taste too many irrelevant sidebars. But the characters were rich. Also a gap in time, which could have been mined.
Really enjoyed.
Really enjoyed.
kaybiasotti93's review
4.0
At first I wasn't sure about this one but it quickly turned into a fascinating story that I rather enjoyed. I personally related to many of Kay's thoughts and feelings. Throughout the novel are drops of wisdom that made me stop and think when encountered. I found there were a couple too many characters to keep track of, especially through the time span.
exurbanis's review
5.0
Actually 4.5
What an imagination Endicott has! Everything she writes is so different from everything else she writes.
This south seas journey was richly documented through the eyes of a young girl.
So foreign and yet the questions of race and appropriation, even well-intentioned, are so current and familiar.
HUGELY UNDERREAD outside Canada
What an imagination Endicott has! Everything she writes is so different from everything else she writes.
This south seas journey was richly documented through the eyes of a young girl.
So foreign and yet the questions of race and appropriation, even well-intentioned, are so current and familiar.
HUGELY UNDERREAD outside Canada
tsoutham's review
4.0
The book is mostly set in Micronesia and for some unfounded reason I thought the plot would be free of colonialism. However this book not only is steeped in colonialism but the main character, Kay, continuously revisits her childhood memories of a being the daughter of a headmaster in a Canadian residential schools for indigenous people. The horror in both her later years sailing the South Seas with her sister and her captain husband and adopting a brother from there traded for tobacco counter-examined with her vivid memories of Canada where children died of chicken pox and isolation from their families have dispelled any romantic notions I had of the Micronesia. Is there a place left untouched by the devastation of colonialism?
In Empire of the Wild, a book I read recently, colonialism looms large, spreading like a virus over indigenous communities. Women and earth magic are strong protectors and healers, but lose much to its killing ways. In The Difference, Kay is a keen observer and endeavours to make right by taking her grown brother back to the island of his people, finding that they have all been lost to disease. The brother seems destroyed by this enormous loss. One beautiful scene where he swims with whales demonstrates the connection that we all lose when we separate from place.
I wrote in my review of Empire of the Wild that "colonialism’s companion, corporate greed, is an undercurrent to man’s racist ways and the extinguisher of the plants and animals on which indigenous communities depend". I see now that in The Difference this is certainly the case because the trade that is gathering momentum in the early 1900s and to which Kay, her sister, and brother-in-law proper from is destructive and industrial. This book is based on accounts and diaries from the time period.
In another book I read this summer, Greenwood, indigenous people are a side note, to massive logging operations, and the death of old growth forests. The stolen boy who becomes Kay's brother, Aren, and from whom she realizes the magnitude of colonialism, is also a sidenote. The mother who is forced upon Aren keeps the secret of his people's extinction from him until Aren runs away with Kay to Micronesia. She does this in order to maintain a reality that is aligned with colonialism, corporate greed, and racism. Although she denies the latter, her refusal to see Aren as different and her continuous efforts to 'civilize' Aren strike at the heart of her deep misunderstandings of what is being lost by Aren and the rest of the world when we fail to recognize indigenous ways of knowing.
Recognizing indigenous ways of knowing and being is one way to heal the world and ourselves. I wish The Difference had said more about indigenous ways of knowing and being. When mentioned they were generalized and obscure. I would have liked to learn more about Micronesian indigenous peoples.
In Empire of the Wild, a book I read recently, colonialism looms large, spreading like a virus over indigenous communities. Women and earth magic are strong protectors and healers, but lose much to its killing ways. In The Difference, Kay is a keen observer and endeavours to make right by taking her grown brother back to the island of his people, finding that they have all been lost to disease. The brother seems destroyed by this enormous loss. One beautiful scene where he swims with whales demonstrates the connection that we all lose when we separate from place.
I wrote in my review of Empire of the Wild that "colonialism’s companion, corporate greed, is an undercurrent to man’s racist ways and the extinguisher of the plants and animals on which indigenous communities depend". I see now that in The Difference this is certainly the case because the trade that is gathering momentum in the early 1900s and to which Kay, her sister, and brother-in-law proper from is destructive and industrial. This book is based on accounts and diaries from the time period.
In another book I read this summer, Greenwood, indigenous people are a side note, to massive logging operations, and the death of old growth forests. The stolen boy who becomes Kay's brother, Aren, and from whom she realizes the magnitude of colonialism, is also a sidenote. The mother who is forced upon Aren keeps the secret of his people's extinction from him until Aren runs away with Kay to Micronesia. She does this in order to maintain a reality that is aligned with colonialism, corporate greed, and racism. Although she denies the latter, her refusal to see Aren as different and her continuous efforts to 'civilize' Aren strike at the heart of her deep misunderstandings of what is being lost by Aren and the rest of the world when we fail to recognize indigenous ways of knowing.
Recognizing indigenous ways of knowing and being is one way to heal the world and ourselves. I wish The Difference had said more about indigenous ways of knowing and being. When mentioned they were generalized and obscure. I would have liked to learn more about Micronesian indigenous peoples.
ryzmat's review
4.0
The Difference tells the story of Kay Ward, a young woman from Nova Scotia on two different journeys she takes around the world; the first in 1911 as a 12-year old, and the second 10 years later in 1922. On the first journey, while she's with her older sister and her new husband/captain of the Morning Light, a Palauan boy is given to the ship in exchange for four pounds of tobacco, fundamentally changing the entire family.
I had a tough time with this book. It's absolutely beautiful, in both story and writing, but I found it dragged on, the first part especially. Actually, pretty much the first part exclusively as I read all of part 2 in one day. I had a hard time with the style of writing, with many of the nautical and early 20th century language being lost on me and making it difficult. There are a ton of intricate, complex characters here, and a lot of interesting emotional conflicts, both between and within the range of characters. In addition to the main moral dilemma of the.. forced adoption, there are many other far-ranging moral and emotional issues raised (many!), discussing God's will, and residential schools, and displacement, and the implications of past actions.
Honestly, until around page 200, I was dead-set on giving this three stars. I found myself unfocused and totally bored. But the latter half more than made up for it, and I'm debating between four and five stars here. In the end for me, patience prevailed and this was a beautiful read, more than worth my longer than average reading time.
I had a tough time with this book. It's absolutely beautiful, in both story and writing, but I found it dragged on, the first part especially. Actually, pretty much the first part exclusively as I read all of part 2 in one day. I had a hard time with the style of writing, with many of the nautical and early 20th century language being lost on me and making it difficult. There are a ton of intricate, complex characters here, and a lot of interesting emotional conflicts, both between and within the range of characters. In addition to the main moral dilemma of the.. forced adoption, there are many other far-ranging moral and emotional issues raised (many!), discussing God's will, and residential schools, and displacement, and the implications of past actions.
Honestly, until around page 200, I was dead-set on giving this three stars. I found myself unfocused and totally bored. But the latter half more than made up for it, and I'm debating between four and five stars here. In the end for me, patience prevailed and this was a beautiful read, more than worth my longer than average reading time.
runtobooks's review
3.0
marina endicott is just not for me, no matter how lovely the cover designs are
patthebook's review
2.0
This was somehow good but also boring. I wanted to like much of it but it felt like way too many potentially great ideas or elements were introduced that were only half-delivered or left a lot of promising aspects on the table.
karenllowe's review
4.0
An interesting examination of different attitudes towards religion, family, cultures, class systems, gender issues, and more. Like the boat and the whale, some attitudes float on the surface and some swim much deeper but are capable of surfacing to great amazement. I found the slowly unfolding story to be at times hypnotic, at times lethargic. Endicott's descriptions of being at sea - the storms, the wind, the motion - were wonderful. I felt like I was with Kay, Thea, Francis and crew. My one complaint about the book was the occasional POV changes where I didn't immediately realize who was the POV character. So often we were in Kay's head - and I liked that best. Other than that, I thought the book was masterfully written.
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