'The Sea Runners' by Ivan Doig - an awesome book, a story that will stay in my memory. [View all]

Unforgettable.

I loved this book. I was totally swallowed up by it. It sounded a bell in my soul that is still echoing, long after turning the final page.

I don't know how to explain it, all I can say is that there was a indefinable something - about the story, about the characters, about the writing style, about the journey, the landscape/seascape - that just grabbed me and set me into that canoe right alongside the escapees from New Archangel as they battled their way down the northern Pacific coast in the winter of 1853. Much as I fervently wished for their survival and deliverance from their travails, I was equally loathe to come to the end of the journey and the end of the story.

One of the most powerful elements of this book is the author's use of language. This was written in a sort of archaic style, as though the author himself is living in the 1850s, shaping the dialogues and the descriptions in the cadences of that time. It is exquisitely done and utterly mesmerizing. I was thoroughly transported back to that time and place.

The Sea Runners now rates alongside Burial Rites as the best and most memorable books I've read so far this year. My heartfelt thanks to Locks, who first pointed out this book in the February 15 "What are you reading" thread, and to Enthusiast for carrying that mention forward. I am so grateful to have been turned on to this book.

Edited to add: This review is also for japple, who wanted to know what I thought of the book.