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A review by yellowishresin
The North Water by Ian McGuire
5.0
The prose, while stark, crude, and full of brutality, is beautiful and sonorous. Normally, I am put off by such graphic depictions of violence, but here it helps create an atmosphere of darkness that encircles even you. And while the novel is bleak, it never gives into that bleakness---it is almost a parable for what happens when you do.
On the surface it appears pulpy: a murder-mystery, themes of man v. nature, good v. evil (each represented in a rival man-so tired). But it nevers falls into tropes and archetypes. Its characters are not lessons and its bears don't stand for untamed nature, they are just bears (with "soup bowl" like paws).
On the surface it appears pulpy: a murder-mystery, themes of man v. nature, good v. evil (each represented in a rival man-so tired). But it nevers falls into tropes and archetypes. Its characters are not lessons and its bears don't stand for untamed nature, they are just bears (with "soup bowl" like paws).