eowyn ivey to the bright edge of the world

As starvation and illness take hold, the wild world seems firmly in control and Allen and his men powerless to resist long enough to ever get home. And even as he finds himself stunned by the harsh magnificence of the places he travels through, Allen finds himself deeply unsettled by the stories he hears and the things he sees in this unbelievable land: beasts who turn into men, a woman eternally shrouded by fog, and a man who sleeps in trees, perched like a raven. Their expedition is poorly planned and badly provisioned so they are forced to rely on the help of those they encounter: a few white men but mostly native communities. And rarely have I seen it used to better effect.Īllen quickly finds himself in a completely foreign world as he journeys up the Wolverine River Valley with his men (the same setting used in Ivey’s debut novel, The Snow Child).

Yes, it is my favourite of all literary techniques: the epistolary novel. It is through these journals that we learn their story, supplemented by a few letters between them, the writings of other members of Allen’s expedition, and the contemporary correspondence between Walt Forrester, Allen’s great-nephew, and a young Alaskan museum curator to whom he is sending all the documents. Separated, the two keep diaries with an eye to sharing them once reunited. Sophie, originally keen to join her husband on this great adventure, instead finds herself confined to the stultifying military barracks in Vancouver, Washington, pregnant with a long-for child. Newly married, the two are separated when Allen is charged with leading a small expedition into a wild, unmapped region of Alaska in the winter of 1885. The book tells the story of Colonel Allen Forrester and his wife, Sophie. I do not think you could have pried it out of my hands when I was reading it and yet I read so slowly, so carefully, not wanting to miss a detail and desperately wanting to prolong the experience.

It felt like kismet, to find a book so beautifully written, so wonderfully imagined and so, so perfectly tailored to my interests. It has been a long time since I have been as wholly consumed by a book as I was by To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey when I read it earlier this year.

Eowyn ivey to the bright edge of the world