Timothy Findley: I love you
One of Timothy Findley's recurring themes is the distruction of the family unit from within, and Not Wanted on the Voyage is no exception. I thought that it couldn't get worse than in The Last of the Crazy People, but it is possible.
Not Wanted on the Voyage is the story of Noah Noyles, his wife, their three sons, and their sons' wives. Noah is the Noah, from the Bible. The story opens with the family already in a state of decline. Then God shows up and explains to Noah that he's going to flood the world, so Noah had better build an arc ASAP, and load it up with all these animals I brought you. So Noah does just that, and completely destroys his family in the process.
The Bible tells the story of Noah in a very ho-hum, everything-is-gonna-be-cool kind of way. Everything is orderly, peaceful: the animals practicaly hold hands and skip two by two into the boat. Findley, of course, doesn't tell it that way. I normally would steer clear of a book based on a religious tale; but trust Finldey to do a very tongue-in-cheek, somewhat snide account of Biblical events, complete with gender bending and homosexual undertones.
I do not want to ruin the plot, or the ending, so I won't go much further into detail, lest I spoil it. I would, however, strongly recommend this book to anyone, religious or no. Findley himself was a gay man with very cynical views of religion - Christianity in particular. Wikipedia describes Findley as such: "His writing, typical of the Southern Ontario Gothic genre, was heavily influenced by Jungian psychology, and mental illness, gender and sexuality were frequent recurring themes in his work. His characters often carried dark personal secrets, and were often conflicted -- sometimes to the point of psychosis -- by these burdens."
This novel is no exception, so if you enjoy a little darkness, you will enjoy this book as much as I do: it is rife with psycosis and, like Crazy People, is written in a seemingly simplistic fashion, with an incredibly dark and raw underlay, wich succeeds in revealing immense amounts of information about his characters. To establish some kind of rating sytem here, if I may: 8.5/10 points. (For the record, I give The Last of the Crazy People a 9.5/10, but i read it a while ago, and do not feel comfortable giving an adequate review!)
Not Wanted on the Voyage is the story of Noah Noyles, his wife, their three sons, and their sons' wives. Noah is the Noah, from the Bible. The story opens with the family already in a state of decline. Then God shows up and explains to Noah that he's going to flood the world, so Noah had better build an arc ASAP, and load it up with all these animals I brought you. So Noah does just that, and completely destroys his family in the process.
The Bible tells the story of Noah in a very ho-hum, everything-is-gonna-be-cool kind of way. Everything is orderly, peaceful: the animals practicaly hold hands and skip two by two into the boat. Findley, of course, doesn't tell it that way. I normally would steer clear of a book based on a religious tale; but trust Finldey to do a very tongue-in-cheek, somewhat snide account of Biblical events, complete with gender bending and homosexual undertones.
I do not want to ruin the plot, or the ending, so I won't go much further into detail, lest I spoil it. I would, however, strongly recommend this book to anyone, religious or no. Findley himself was a gay man with very cynical views of religion - Christianity in particular. Wikipedia describes Findley as such: "His writing, typical of the Southern Ontario Gothic genre, was heavily influenced by Jungian psychology, and mental illness, gender and sexuality were frequent recurring themes in his work. His characters often carried dark personal secrets, and were often conflicted -- sometimes to the point of psychosis -- by these burdens."
This novel is no exception, so if you enjoy a little darkness, you will enjoy this book as much as I do: it is rife with psycosis and, like Crazy People, is written in a seemingly simplistic fashion, with an incredibly dark and raw underlay, wich succeeds in revealing immense amounts of information about his characters. To establish some kind of rating sytem here, if I may: 8.5/10 points. (For the record, I give The Last of the Crazy People a 9.5/10, but i read it a while ago, and do not feel comfortable giving an adequate review!)
posted by VB at 12:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home