Thomas Wharton (1) (1963–)

I don't know HOW I found out about this book which wasn't even published in the USA. Somehow this is a published by Random House Canada... I have no idea why because it immediately sounded like such a promising narrative! Not to mention that Wharton has won various awards for his other books yet somehow has not had much traction in the US? I'm assuming... or this lovely book would have crossed the border for US audiences. I had to seek out a copy. This is eco-fiction. It's also science-fiction. I LOVE that Wharton actually namedrops Tarkovsky's film 'Stalker' early on within the narrative, as so many books I read often remind me of 'Roadside Picnic' and I feel I'm always grasping at straws in the comparison. His mention of Stalker lets me know that this isn't just my imagination here. Within Wharton's book, fracking and mining in a small town has caused weird events called decoherences, causing the town to become uninhabitable. So instead of aliens creating the problem in 'Roadside Picnic', Wharton made the obvious, smart decision to have human activity create the problems. The story connects a woman who is working to help animals in the Environmental Reclamation Area, another woman who is trying to profit from the animals by trafficking rare animals. A third character is a game designer, all three characters are connected by a decoherence that happened when they were children in a diner. There are SO MANY memorable tidbits in this book -- one of my favorites being a game the main character Alex has invented involving Joseph Merrick, the elephant man, being a detective. Sadly, I think the pieces are better than the whole, interesting sci-fi elements and ideas that ultimately does not tie together as much as I would wish. I wonder if a lot of climate fiction really can't possibly have answers to the problem, so many of them end up on magical tangents. I had the same problem with Lidia Yuknavitch's 'Thrust' where the pieces just didn't fit together for me. Maybe the climate problem is so big, a novel ends up spinning away, even from the writer. Maybe I'm expecting a writer to solve a problem, when they are just intending to write a sci-fi book. So I need to learn to expect less from sci-fi? I still enjoyed reading this. And this was still very worthy of being published for US readers!
I would set this on the shelf beside: 'The Glass Hotel' by Emily St. John Mandel, 'My Volcano' by John Elizabeth Stintzi, 'Bangkok Wakes to Rain' by Pitchaya Sudbanthad.… (mere)

Ho scovato questo libro per caso, come spesso accade, e sono rimasta molto intrigata dalla trama. Un libro che parla di libri che vanno oltre i loro limiti: prometteva davvero di essere avvincente.

La prima metà lo è stata davvero. Ogni personaggio è così peculiare da far divorare una pagina dopo l'altra per saperne di più su di lui. Il castello del conte, poi, pieno di misteri, ingranaggi e libri rari è affascinante e promette sviluppi interessanti. Già pregustavo scenari pieni di significato quando sono arrivata alla seconda metà e il mio entusiasmo si è bruscamente raffreddato.

Qui, infatti, il romanzo perde il fascino del mistero e assume uno sconfortante guazzabuglio di azioni che vorrebbero essere avventure, ma hanno il solo merito di confondere il lettore, di fargli perdere il senso delle vicende (oltre che annoiarlo in alcuni punti). Un vero peccato, perché era un libro pieno di potenziale: a quale lettore non piacerebbe leggere la storia del libro infinito?… (mere)

> [Des pages vraiment glacées] — « LE CHAMP DE GLACE », de Thomas Wharton. — Rescapé d'une chute au fond d'une crevasse dans les Rocheuses canadiennes, Edward Byrne est soigné dans un village où se côtoient Indiens et trappeurs, poètes et aventurières qui racontent tous de belles et mystérieuses histoires. Ed. Rivages, 214 pages, 110 F.
—Philippe Duval, le 23 déc. 2000 (Le Parisien)

> L'Express : https://www-lexpress-fr.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/le-...
> Critiques Libres : http://www.critiqueslibres.com/i.php/vcrit/7015
> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Wharton-Le-Champ-de-glace/101988… (mere)