The author of The Kiss, her memoir addressing her viewpoint on her voluntary role in a romantic, sexual relationship with her father, Kathryn Harrison is equally shocking in The Seal Wife. Of course, knowing this is fiction, it is a little different. I will admit to having to deter myself from being influenced (in a discriminating way?) by the incest she engaged herself in.Not surprisingly, then. There is a feminist view here. More specifically, the men are all portrayed rather negatively, through stereotypes (womanizer, abusive, looking only for sex, dominating).Like the setting (tiny town in Alaska with only a few thousand), the novel is a barren landscape peppered with pockets of eloquent language, several prosaic scenes, little dialogue, but readers will easily be lost on the way and/or in between the maybe worthwhile powerful vignettes.As she as in her memoir, Harrison writes fiction with what I assess to be more than necessary candor. To be more precise, I admire honesty and straightforward writers, but the details, visual descriptions in some scenes equate to a crude style that I do not.This is, again like The Kiss, a book about obsession. Bigelow, the protagonist, somehow becomes enamored with The Aleut Woman. She has no other name; she will not/cannot talk to him. Interestingly, she refuses his offers for anything emotionally intimate, including kisses, caresses, fondling, oral sex. Missionary style. She allows herself one orgasm, which she induces, sadly by her own hand while he is inside her. For as long as "She", as Bigelow names her, will leave her door open to allow him to enter, he will bring a gift (usually a pelt, usually a rabbit), she will cook as he watches her (closely), they will lie together in her bed, she will bathe in a pot of snow she has melted, then smoke for a while, all while he observes, sometimes talking little, sometimes unable to pause. Then he will return to his lonely house, still knowing her no better than when he was first granted entrance; no better than the first night he followed her home from Getz's General Merchandise in town, where she gestures for four things he has now memorized (tea, tobacco, toffee, paregoric). She is not a deaf-mute, as she reacts to sounds, allows herself the one cry during orgasm. Even more sad than this, she never really recognizes him, his presence, except in a passive, indirect way. Sometimes she nods, gestures, to all his words, but mostly she merely goes about her life, with him there as an accessory; she even has a way of looking at him that is not looking at him, as if she is looking through him. But she has to at least somewhat acknowledge him as they have sex almost every night. So, it seems this daily sex is enough to have Bigelow grieve as he never has before in his life, not for anyone, even his late father, when, a little more than eight months later, she does not let him in. Not long after, she disappears. From the middle of June until September (when she returns as mysteriously as she left), our protagonist is a study of obsession. He tries to replace She with other girls, with little success There is the prostitute Violet whom figures out his secret, that he wants a girl whom he can fuck without talking. She charges him extra to remain silent. There is Getz's daughter whom lives above The General Merchandise, whom is also not a deaf mute but will not/cannot communicate verbally. Although Miriam is more engaging, especially later on, writing to him, showing affection, etcetera, he cannot be seduced. A different man since The Aleut Woman, he wants her. Any other woman is compared to her; he thinks of her while having sex with other women. No other woman will do. Throughout all of this, Bigelow does have to make ends meet. This is where Harrison's sedulous research is exemplified, as he is a meteorologist during 195. Scientific vernacular is used; he flies a weather kite, advances in weather & weather technology are referenced. There are few other characters than the ones already mentioned; maybe a few others that live in the desolate, lonely landscape of the tiny town in Alaska, then the man whom lived in She's abode during the interim when she disappeared, whom was the one to notify Bigelow on her return. Embarrassingly, pretty much the entire town knew about his affairs with The Aleut Woman, as is inevitable in a town of that size. They also commended him on his kite, though. Alas, he never really has much contact with anyone else. his days are full with equations, weather, occasionally a female. A loner. Only twenty six, though. Seems young to be so secluded from society, from life.I feel like this is an emerging sub genre. Otherwise one I am only now being introduced to, lonely lives in cold, isolated, barren, lonely, desolate settings. Ripe places for grief, death, obsession, drama, darkness. Kathryn Harrison's try with this was admirable, with the needed picturesque language, but needed more than that to impress me overall.
Rating 4-1/2. This very unusual novel is the story of Bigelow, a young mid-western man who is sent to Anchorage, Alaska in 1915 to establish a weather station. He arrives without the barest necessities or knowledge of what is expected of him, thinking that there is an established station, and when he realizes the situation he has to find the land to put the station on, arrange and pay for the construction at horribly inflated prices and in a place where most of the supplies he requires don't exist (i.e, nails), and then he must acquire laborers to build it and figure out how to make them work once that arrive on the jobsite. Meanwhile, the weather station is almost totally cutoff from the town of Anchorage, so that he meets no one and makes no friends. His nearest neighbor is an Aleut woman with whom he is fascinated and eventually creates an unusual relationship, albeit a silent one. After that relationship disintegrates Bigelow, who is socially inept, has to find other ways to survive in the desolate and unforgiving north. Two of the major themes of this book are sound and silence. Music is both a succor and means by which the weather station gets built. The women in the book are either silent, and their means of and reasons for silence must be discovered by Bigelow, or they are so chatty that he pays them to keep quiet. Along the way Bigelow discovers that his survival in Alaska is more than food and foul weather gear and is very different than in any other place he has lived. The writing was excellent, at times lyrical, at times very spare. Bigelow was not at first a very likeable character, but he was sympathetic and his persistence and doggedness grew on me. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books which are a bit off the beaten path.
What do You think about The Seal Wife (2003)?
As the mother of three small children, I have to snatch my reading moments, and quite often I can only read three or so pages at a time. This book is kind of perfect for this style of reading, as nothing much happens but it is so beautifully written that each page is a pleasure. Essentially it is a book about sexual obsession and loneliness, I think. Bigelowe is a very young man who works as a meteorologist in Alaska during the period of WWI in Europe. At the time, Alaska is a wild frontier, a bit like something out of a cowboy film, but much much colder. Bigelowe has virtually zero contact with anyone except for a mute Aleut woman, with whom he becomes utterly obsessed. When she disappears without explanation, he passes his time building a massive kite that he fills with scientific instruments and flies miles up into the sky. Along the way he has a sort of affair and a horrible, bizarre accident. I did enjoy this book, it was quite unlike anything else I've read, and somehow I think Kathryn Harrison captured what it would have been like living in such a harsh environment, and she did it beautifully. I get the impression that she eats, sleeps, breathes and lives words, her writing is truly exceptional, perhaps even in the same category as Hilary Mantell. It's the sort of writing that leaves you speechless and dreamy, and makes you realise that any small dream of one day writing a novel of your own is utterly hopeless!
—Kirsten
Also, I tried to hide, the way I might've if I'd been reading Danielle Steele standing up in the library, although this book is by no means Danielle Steele, not even close. Read it, though, and you'll see what I mean. You'll be a little bit ashamed of liking it as much as you do. It's stark, beautiful, literary smut. [UM, P.S., The title is THE SEAL WIFE and I'm not sure why GoodReads insists on calling it SEAL WIFE POSTER but the only other option was SEAL WIFE DUMPBIN and I don't know what a dumpbin is but it sounds too dirty, even for this book.]
—Preeta
I give it three and a half stars. Kathryn Harrison is a great writer and I have read most of her novels and some of her non-fiction. She is very good at creating characters from various times throughout history. In this book her story is set in Alaska in the time right before WWI. The main character Bigelow comes north to track the weather for the U.S. government. While there he falls obsessively for a woman who does not speak who he calls the Aleut. Harrison's writing style was very spare in this book, which completely matches the setting and the isolation Bigelow feels every day. I liked how neither Bigelow, nor the reader, really knows much about the Aleut and how their relationship seems to be a little like a myth of a man who falls in love with a seal.
—Sylvia
