Book Summary: Winner of the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction! This is Thomas King’s first literary novel in 15 years and follows on the success of the award-winning and bestselling The Inconvenient Indian and his beloved Green Grass, Running Water and Truth and Bright Water, both of which continue to be taught in Canadian schools and universities. Green Grass, Running Water is widely considered a contemporary Canadian classic.
In The Back of the Turtle, Gabriel returns to Smoke River, the reserve where his mother grew up and to which she returned with Gabriel’s sister. The reserve is deserted after an environmental disaster killed the population, including Gabriel’s family, and the wildlife. Gabriel, a brilliant scientist working for Domidion, created GreenSweep, and indirectly led to the crisis. Now he has come to see the damage and to kill himself in the sea. But as he prepares to let the water take him, he sees a young girl in the waves. Plunging in, he saves her, and soon is saving others. Who are these people with their long black hair and almond eyes who have fallen from the sky?
Filled with brilliant characters, trademark wit, wordplay and a thorough knowledge of native myth and story-telling, this novel is a masterpiece by one of our most important writers.
My Thoughts: I was instantly hooked by this novel and by the time I finished it, I couldn't wait to begin it again. Thomas King has a real talent for character - and an amazing capacity for compassion and humor. Gabriel thinks himself the villain in this tale of environmental destruction and is determined to drown himself in the sea, and yet King writes him as an anguished, reluctant hero and you can't help but the feel compassion for him and urge him to fight for life. Dorian Asher is more likely the villain in this disaster, as he's the powerful, profit hungry CEO of Domidion, but he doesn't see himself this way at all - as as King writes him as a man driven by his appetites and desires, crippled by health concerns and gob-smacked by his wife's affair and desire for a divorce - and I can't help but to feel a deep compassion for this shallow, misguided man and his rich, but empty life.
Mara, Crispin and Sonny are truly some of the victims of this environmental crisis, but they refuse to see themselves this way, and readers won't see this either. They're survivors, hope-rs, dreamers and eventually, doers, as the ocean, the reserve and the village begin to live, grow and thrive again.
A powerful book that shows us meaningful reconciliation in action - full of intriguing characters, environmental caution, cultural hopefulness and genuine compassion, all told with Thomas King's deft comedic touch. An absolute winner!
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