And (of course!) because it’s a well-written and cleverly complex tale lots of room for exploration, and the generation of many words of student “analysis”. It apparently made quite a stir, and in the thirteen years since first publication has become a Can-Lit high school/college standard likely because (cynicism alert!) of its First Nations author, characters, and themes. The internet is seething with reviews on this one I missed it when it first came out, but apparently it was a Giller Prize finalist and a Governor General’s Award finalist in 2000. Already at the bottom of the first page I couldn’t look away I read eagerly to the end (flagging just a little when the author stubbed her toe on the possible-but-slightly-contrived reason for her brother’s motivations regarding that trip out onto the ocean) completely accepted the rather vague ending scenario (who’s really alive? dead? what does it all mean?) and eagerly pressed it into my husband’s hands: “You must read this book!” (And he did, and he loved it, too.)Ī surprisingly funny and, yes, cheerful (in places) sort of book for all of the tragedies it describes.

Ooh, sounds all deep and Can-Lit dark, doesn’t it? But the story transcends these sound-bite assessments. Picking snippets at random from the first page of a Google search on Monkey Beach yields these comments: “(C)ombines both joy and tragedy in a harrowing yet restrained story of grief and survival…” “(F)illed with intense landscapes…” “(A)ddresses issues related to race, historic oppression, and the clash between cultures in a coming-of-age ghost story…” “(A) story about childhood, family, loss, grief and life on a 21st century Native-Canadian reserve…” This would have been a solid 10, but I docked the half point because the story fell into cliché right near the end, after brilliantly flouting expectations most of the way through.

Part of the time (most of the time) the words flow effortlessly and reading them is like riding the crest of a perfect wave occasionally the reader is tumbled out of complacence and, gasping a bit from the shock, needs to go back over what has just been read, to readjust to what’s just been thrown at you.

Monkey beach robinson