Monkey beach

by

377 pages

English language

Published 2000 by Knopf Canada, Distributed by Random House of Canada.

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(1 review)

"Five hundred miles north of Vancouver is Kitamaat, an Indian reservation in the homeland of the Haisla people. Growing up a tough, wild tomboy, swimming, fighting, and fishing in a remote village where the land slips into the green ocean on the edge of the world, Lisamarie has always been different. Visited by ghosts and shapeshifters, tormented by premonitions, she can't escape the sense that something terrible is waiting for her.

She recounts her enchanted yet scarred life as she journeys by speedboat up the frigid waters of the Douglas Channel. She is searching for her brother, dead by drowning, and in her own way running as fast as she can toward danger.".

"Circling her brother's tragic death are the remarkable characters that make up her family: Lisamarie's parents, struggling to join their Haisla heritage with Western ways; Uncle Mick, a Native rights activist and devoted Elvis fan; …

6 editions

reviewed Monkey beach by Eden Robinson

Beautiful atmosphere, incredible characters, very good at exploring themes.

I've mostly said everything about my thoughts in my other comment, but overall, this book is stupendously written, and my gripes against it are probably subjective. There were some supernatural elements I wish could've been explored in a little more detail. Highly recommend this, but only if you're doing okay mental-health wise and space it out. Don't binge it like I did—it gets brutal and tragic at times.

Subjects

  • Haisla Indians -- Fiction.
  • Brothers -- Death -- Fiction.
  • Indian women -- Fiction.
  • Young women -- Fiction.
  • Kitimat Region (B.C.) -- Fiction.
  • British Columbia -- Fiction.
  • Rocky Mountains -- Fiction.