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Lost Geography A Novel Charlotte Bacon 9780374191603 Books

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Lost Geography A Novel Charlotte Bacon 9780374191603 Books

Lost Geography is a story about the search for each character's place in the world. Each character is uprooted from the familiar and must find a place that 'fits' in a new and strange landscape in which they are in many ways an outsider. And as they find a place in which they 'fit', they find that each choice closes off channels of possibility, of adventure, and that in settling into their place, they must face up to the joy and pain of real (though sometimes mundane) life. These common threads of exploration, adaptation, choice, these tie four very different generations together. Margaret and Davis find on their wedding night that they really do fit. Hilda finds Armand, then devotes herself to her daughter. Danielle is both the light and the anchor for Osman's roving soul. And Death is, inevitably, part of life. In this story the separation of children from their parents severs them from familiar modes of understanding, from their history, and this forces them, with varying degrees of success, to forge new ways of understanding their place in the world.
I found the last scene quite moving. Osman's carpets, thick with dust from their previous owners, are a piece of history that he cannot let go of, just as he cannot let go of his memories of Danielle. Lost Geography is an easy read, but I believe the 'morals' may be deeper than it seems at first glance. Osman's story as he tells it to his children during Danielle's illness may be much like Bacon's intention for her novel. Sasha and Sophie are disappointed with the story because they did not expect such an abrupt ending. "What's the moral?" they ask. And avoiding cliche, Bacon also seems to answer casually, "I don't know," leaving the pondering to the reader.
Bacon has a talent for carving out unique characters in simple, spare terms. With love stories that resonate with deep romance, subtle shades of understanding, sharp observations about people's intentions, Lost Geography is a very moving account of four generations of 'migrants', in the literal and metaphorical sense of the word.


Tags : Lost Geography: A Novel [Charlotte Bacon] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV>A heart-breaking novel by a prize-winning young writer In a debut novel that is a triumph of wit and feeling,Charlotte Bacon,Lost Geography: A Novel,Farrar, Straus and Giroux,0374191603,General,FICTION General,Fiction,Fiction Literary,Fiction-Literary,General Adult,POPULAR AMERICAN FICTION,United States

Lost Geography A Novel Charlotte Bacon 9780374191603 Books Reviews

The common thread in this book is the transcontinental distances that characters put between themselves and their families. It all starts with Davis leaving Scotland for Canada, not so much to find a living, but to escape the stifling constraints of tradition. Then Hilda, his daughter, left her past in Regina and moved to Toronto. Hilda's daughter, Danielle, needs to escape her mother, who is larger than life without even trying, and in order to find hr own identity, moves to Paris. There she falls in love with Osman, who has also abandoned his native England escaping a sad childhood. And so it goes...
The first chapters of the book are definitively for the impatient reader, as the author does not spend too much time recreating scenes or circumstances. There is a certain economy of language, and the flow hassles through. Once we get to Paris, the pace slows down, and we get to savor the intricacies of the characters. I enjoyed this book, and identified especially with Danielle's character. I did not appreciate the common use of archetypes that the author used, though, above all when it came to define French or Canadian people. Still, this is well worth a read.
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.
Lost Geography is a story about the search for each character's place in the world. Each character is uprooted from the familiar and must find a place that 'fits' in a new and strange landscape in which they are in many ways an outsider. And as they find a place in which they 'fit', they find that each choice closes off channels of possibility, of adventure, and that in settling into their place, they must face up to the joy and pain of real (though sometimes mundane) life. These common threads of exploration, adaptation, choice, these tie four very different generations together. Margaret and Davis find on their wedding night that they really do fit. Hilda finds Armand, then devotes herself to her daughter. Danielle is both the light and the anchor for Osman's roving soul. And Death is, inevitably, part of life. In this story the separation of children from their parents severs them from familiar modes of understanding, from their history, and this forces them, with varying degrees of success, to forge new ways of understanding their place in the world.
I found the last scene quite moving. Osman's carpets, thick with dust from their previous owners, are a piece of history that he cannot let go of, just as he cannot let go of his memories of Danielle. Lost Geography is an easy read, but I believe the 'morals' may be deeper than it seems at first glance. Osman's story as he tells it to his children during Danielle's illness may be much like Bacon's intention for her novel. Sasha and Sophie are disappointed with the story because they did not expect such an abrupt ending. "What's the moral?" they ask. And avoiding cliche, Bacon also seems to answer casually, "I don't know," leaving the pondering to the reader.
Bacon has a talent for carving out unique characters in simple, spare terms. With love stories that resonate with deep romance, subtle shades of understanding, sharp observations about people's intentions, Lost Geography is a very moving account of four generations of 'migrants', in the literal and metaphorical sense of the word.