The 53rd Parallel - full review

I only got to read about half of this book before I ran out of time, but I was enjoying it. The style provided a clear setting and feel for the characters’ inner emotions. What I think drew my interest to this book was the fishing, and, though I didn’t see the whole picture, a story of the fight for natural resource conservation. I study fish, despite not being a fisherman myself. Given that the author has been a fishing guide, I figured there would be some good inside views on that, and there are.

The story goes back and forth between Ireland and Canada, and the two meet up. Brian is the Irish fishing guide who has a dream of leading his own guide services in northern Canada. He has a painful struggle with alcoholism, but meets Maureen, who offers to help him realize his dream. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, we read about an Ojibway tribe, their way of life, and the positive and negative interactions they have had with foreigners in their home land.

At first I was reluctant to read about a character involved with IRA, but thought it would be good to become better informed about that group. And though I haven’t been there yet, I feel some form of nostalgia for Ireland, maybe through ancestry? The Canadian setting is more familiar to me, as I imagine it to be much like northern New England. I didn’t finish this one, but I can say that it is a vivid style with very realistic people trying to overcome their conflicts, both internal and communal.
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Thanks to the kind folks at Light Messages Publishing, I was able to finish reading this book. At times I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep reading; it was not always easy to get through. There are all types of tension that come up, between characters and the larger picture they all fit into as well. However, I found the plot to be very compelling, and wanted to find out what would happen. To say this is an ambitious novel is accurate. It is different, to me, because of its sprawling complexity. There are many characters, and while we get to know a few pretty well, others are either hard to keep track of or more vague. Also it is not always clear who is talking, or who is being addressed. However, this large cast of characters makes the story much more realistic, and this is historical fiction based on years of research.

It is all action, and goes back and forth between scenes as they are happening, with the visual clarity of a movie. There is no outright background on the setting or the people and their cultures, only what is revealed through the characters and their moments in time. That is another stylistic goal, achieved well, I think. Much is said with few words, but the words add up, making it a sort of dense book that feels longer than it actually is. Some of the dialogue seemed a little stiff, too, but it is set in the 1930’s-50’s, and people talked differently back then, I presume. Half of the characters are Irish, too, so that adds another dialect. So, despite some of the stylistic flaws (at least, not so much to my liking), this is a very interesting story tied together in a unique way, and I look forward to reading more in this series!