A Maritimes question...

[daemonluna]

I've been reading for a provincial kids' book award committee since December, and am halfway through my latest stack of about ten books. (So far, one really good but a touch too old for target age range, two okay, and one not-so-great.) The not-so-great one takes place in Newfoundland. For all that it's a teenage-boy survival story, it's remarkably maudlin in spots. All that aside...

So, our intrepid main character is out in his dead brother's kayak, and gets caught unawares by a storm and washed up on a small island. It takes place... somewhere in Newfoundland, in a small-ish town with a fish-packing factory. With A DAY of ending up on the island, he kills a wounded seal (but he doesn't WANT to, angstangstANGST), skins it with his pocketknife and wears the skin (no mention of any kind of cleaning, tanning, etc.), the NEXT DAY has dried seal meat (no mention of any kind of drying process--he doesn't manage to start a fire unril the fourth day) and oh, then there are the dreams he has about the Beothuk people, and the wisdom imparted by the elders about spirit animals, and of COURSE his dead brother is a seal and his dead grandfather is a polar bear and his pothead friend is a gull, and he is a caribou...

Now, I'm a prairie girl. I am perhaps not as familiar with the geographic dispersement of Arctic wildlife or the indigenous wildlife of the east coast as I should be. But what I want to know... is it just me, or is it highly improbable that on his little island, he would be attacked by a (OMG!) POLAR BEAR?

Comments

[troutkitty.livejournal.com]

Well, the premise has served Lost very well for three seasons :)

I love you

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

Well y'know, it's equally as possible that this was a MAGIC POLAR BEAR. And a MAGIC SELF-CURING SEAL, too. (Also, I love you, too.)

[troutkitty.livejournal.com]

I suppose the self-curing refers to either a salt or a smoke method, and not, "I'm all better now from being mostly-dead, and I'm gunning for the one who skinned me", because oh, wow, would that be an awesome sequel.

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

That would be awesome--especially since it would be a skinless, half-eaten ZOMBIE SEAL.

[alessar.livejournal.com]

Totally right there with you on the Mysterious Island of Mystery and Minimal Plot Advancement.

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

You know what Lost could use? (Keeping in mind I haven't seen an episode since halfway through the first season.) More zombie seals, to pair up with the polar bear.

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

Okay, I will accept the polar bear, then. *g* I went back and read the seal scene, and he skinned the seal with his pocket knife, and scraped it with a broken CD he found on the beach, and ate the seal meat raw. Somehow, this was easier than taking the jacket off the drowned guy he found one island over, and eating more raw oysters--but whatever. It probably would have meant more if he'd been lost for more than a day at that point.

I would be willing to overlook improbable seal-skinning if it weren't for the clichedness of the spirit animals (no one will be offended 'cause the Beothuk are all dead!), the stilted writing and dialogue, and the whole overwrought emotion (he is abandoneded, and now he is coming to terms with his dead brother and grandfather! Ohh, the symbolism! Ohh, the Deep Meaning of the engraving on his pocket knife... tHAT HIS DEAD GRANDFATHER GAVE TO HIM!)

(Though the dialogue wasn't as bad as in the Halifax explosion book in my last pile. Gahhh. It also had Time Travel! And people spontaneously telling perfect strangers their life stories!)

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

And then died of worms, I assume. :P Seal is not one of those things you'd want to eat raw. (Porcupine is, if that's ever something you need to know).

The thing that really got me is HE'D ONLY BEEN MAROONED A DAY! And, he had oysters to eat. Somehow, raw seal was better than raw oysters. (???) But porcupine is safe to eat raw? Huh.

I'm disappointed to hear anyone would write a bad Halifax explosion book. There's so much already-interesting-enough-history there, you'd think they could refrain from inserting Time Travel.

Ohh, this one was a sequel to a time travel book about the Frank Slide. And time travel can be done well (like Tom's Midnight Garden, or on the adult side of things, To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis), but this was one of those books where it's just a way to just explain everything through the eyes of a modern character. Also, the dialogue was impossibly clunky, and it was full of characters randomly telling people they'd just met their whole life stories.

One of the most recent Dear Canada books is also about the Halifax Explosion (I think the title is No Safe Harbour, but the author escapes me right now), and it was pretty good, though I think that if the author had left more of the main character's family alive, she wouldn't have had to gloss over the emotional trauma at the end, which annoyed me. I've been told that the best kids' book to read on the Halifax Explosion is Irish Chain by Barbara Haworth-Attard. It's on my (very long) mental to-read list.

[mockingspike.livejournal.com]

I think Newfoundlanders consider themselves distinct from Maritimers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritimes

Is the character supposed to be from Newfoundland? I doubt Newfoundlanders are as opposed to the seal hunt as animal rights activists are. The attitudes and experiences you describe don't sound Newfoundlandish to me at all.

[stephaniejane2.livejournal.com]

I have been to NFL. If I had to live there, I would also get high and write a (crappy) book about how I was really a caribou. Also, polar bears don't live on islands, they live on melting glaciers and drown. Duh! ;D

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

The thing is.... the author is from Saskatchewan, not Newfoundland. (Newfoundland has a rich tradition of art and music with strong Celtic roots, and a modern history of unemployment and heavy drinking.) I don't know how authentic the voice is. I've been assured that the polar bear is possible. But that doesn't make the writing good, or the bits about the dead brother and grandfather any less maudlin.

*g* I've read some truly fantastic books as part of this award committee. But this wasn't one of them by a loooooong shot.