Unlock Now Touch Scripted By Alexi Zentner Available As Paperback

novel reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude in terms of the sort of mythos built and this beautiful feel of magical realism, Spanning decades, the narrator speaks of the present, his childhood, and the stories his grandfather told him of the early generation of Sawgamet, the northwoods boomtown which his grandfather founded.
Filled with elements of the supernaturalmahahas, wendigo, qallupilluit, and othersthe mixture that made this into a sort of northwoods magical realism was wellwoven, Very enjoyable. This is not a Westerntraditional tale with a rising action, climax, falling action, but rather a story that seems to deal with infinity circles, Well done, touching work, but all a bit dark, Un récit qui nous transporte dans le froid du Canada, où les chercheurs dor et les bucherons se mêlent aux créatures mystérieuses des bois et des fleuves.
Une histoire toute mignonne, emplie de la beauté de la nature du Canada, qui ma beaucoup plu, On the eve of his mothers death, Stephen comes home to Sawgamet, a logging town where the dangers of working in the cuts are overshadowed by the dark mysteries and magic lurking in the woods.
Thirty years after the mythical summer his grandfather returned to town on a quixotic search for his dead wife, Stephen confronts the painful losses in his own life, It's funny, I usually start out my reviews with a short little blurb of my own just rehashing the particulars of the story, With 'Touch' though, this story was so all over the place that I can't adequately explain it's basis it simply eludes me, The official summary feels deceiving and makes it sound ripe with potential, . . but it never lived up it, that's for sure, I truly feel as if I've been hoodwinked, I blame the stunning cover! shakes fist But honestly, I recall going through this magical realism stage and added practically every book tagged as such, This is one of them, I'm thinking that if the author isn't Sarah Addison Allen, then I apparently don't care much for magical realism,

It should be said that according to the Reading Group Discussion questions yeah, I read them in hopes that it would clarify some things, I was wrong this is considered more along the lines of mythical realism as it incorporates Inuit mythology, While I could say that the incorporation of mythological elements may give it a smidgen of credibility in comparison to strange magical stuff happening for no apparent reason, it was a poorly managed addition to the story.
The story is centered around this small town in the Canadian wilderness which came into existence only after gold was discovered, It's a story about survival, But then out of nowhere some strange creature would pop up and it was like mental whiplash, Like the mahaha actual creatures name, I wasn't just laughing:

"They tickle you until all your breath is gone, Leave you dead, but with a smile, "

Holy freaky shit, That's the stuff of nightmares, But I was intrigued and wanted to know more so I googled this scary beasty with the funny name, The page I found described the mahaha in basically the exact same way the author did in the book, Like it was copied. And that kind of killed the cool out of it, To me, magical realism IS the story, it's incorporated and intertwined into the very fabric of the story, But all the magical elements in Touch felt like a strange and illfitting addition that was added as an afterthought to an otherwise contemporary tale of survival,

The writing style itself, apart from the actual story, was lacking a much needed finesse, The tale was not linear and bounced all over the place without any indication as to whether we were back in the present tense or still being told the story of the past.
The point of view was a poor choice as well, The grandson is the narrator retelling his grandfather's story, Why not just have the grandfather tell his own story Even though the grandfather told him his story it seemed unlikely that he would know as many details as he did.
There were also strange leaps to other characters and telling the story through there eyes which definitely made it implausible as his grandfather wasn't even present in those instances,

While the writing reflected definite potential, it was too unpolished for me to enjoy, I can't remember the last time if ever I finished a novel and honestly had absolutely no clue the purpose or meaning of it, So much of this story was too farcical in its inconceivability for me to garner any sort of entertainment, Many people have lauded this book for it's eerie, haunting qualities but ultimately this left me chilled for all the wrong reasons, I won this book through the Goodreads giveaway and I absolutely adored it, I'm not going to lie I consider a lot of Canadian fiction to be excessively drab and depressing, seemingly for the sake of it, but this was a breath of fresh air.
Certainly, there are depressing parts to this story, but I never felt overwhelmed by them,

I particularly enjoyed the mystical aspect of the book, There are a lot of creatures from Native American/Canadian folklore scattered throughout the narrative, and I think it's important that someone writes about these things, Everyone knows about the Greek and Norse gods, but North American mythology is something that very few people seem interested in discussing, I liked that Zentner describes them as entities that live

alongside human beings, and that many of the characters simply accept them as a dangerous fact of life, much as one would a bear in the woods.


Furthermore, his chronicling of the difficulties people faced at that time in the wilderness is impressive, I, for one, tend to forget that my country was built on extreme hardship, and that people back then did not have furnaces or ploughs to help deal with the weather.
The long winter Jeannot describes to Stephen will make you feel positively claustrophobic,

My one complaint is that I feel like I never got the know Stephen, the narrator, He's always busy talking about his grandfather or his father, and he rarely touches on his own life, But Jeannot was more than enough to keep me engaged!

Wow, this book has a little bit of everything, It is a mutigenerational epic story, It is a tale of survival, love, perseverance, and a little bit of magic sprinkled on top, the book takes place in a fictional town in British Columbia that is formed when Jeannot comes out west to look for gold, Slowly as others come in search of instant riches, the town of Sawgamet is born, Along with the hardships of surviving the challenging conditions, is the mythical creatues who live in the woods, The story is told form the point of view of Jeannot's grandson who has returned to Sawgamet to sit at his mother's death bed and he recalls his own lifetime spent in Sawgamet, as well as recalling the stories his grandfather had relayed to him.


The story has a magical feel to it, interlaced through the three generations who struggle to overcome life's ups and downs, A book about the stories, the places, and the people that make us, A book about love and loss and family, Im so glad I finally picked this one up, Touch is the sort of novel that Salman Rushdie might have produced if he'd been raised in the Canadian wilderness rather than India and England, Alexi Zentner's descriptive writing is as evocative and passionate as Rushdie's, Both authors' stories are rooted in the real world but contain subtle fantasy elements that are not too farfetched to be believable, Zentner's biggest strength as a writer is his ability to describe scene, which in Touch is the forest around the Canadian town of Sawgamet, Like much true art, Zentner's writing is often paradoxical: he describes wild weather and merciless winters with moving poignancy the people who inhabit the forest are, on the surface, as hardy as the wilderness itself, but their toughness masks a deeper humanity and fragility magical beings such as golden caribou, shapeshifters and sea witches are, while fantastical, anchored in the very real landscape of the forest.
The novel's fantasy elements are introduced with amazing subtlety, their existence not so much stated as implied, It is left to the reader to decide whether these magical phenomena are real or projected from the minds of characters influenced by local Native American lore, Zentner is a masterful storyteller whose evocative descriptions engage all the reader's senses, While reading Touch, I saw in my mind's eye vivid images of the town of Sawgamet, the mill, the everpresent river and forest which sustain life for and take life from the people who inhabit the region.
As a debut novel, Touch is a monumental achievement, It is more than just a book that beautifully describes three generations of one family struggling against the elements, Touch contains a moral more appropriate today than ever: when humans take from the forest, the forest also takes back, A very good book.

Alexi Zentnersshort novel about four generations of a family in western Canada in the lates reminded me of a northern sitelinkOne Hundred Years of Solitude.
While it does not have the scope or breadth of Gabriel Garcia Marquez masterpiece, Zentners inspired prose was a great pleasure to read,

Most striking is Zentners use of magic realism with the raw edges of paranormal fantasy as he introduces elements of Inuit myth and legend into his frontier tale.
With language, setting and themes reminiscent of early Jack London and Algernon Blackwood, Zentner has crafted a tale of brutal extremes as a family settles and lays claim to a village in Canadas wild west.


As Stephens mother lays dying, the man looks back over his lifetime and before, tracing stories of his father and grandfather as the family settled a gold mining town and stayed past the boom and made a living logging and supplying the miners before.
Revisiting the family legends of his past, Stephen draws the reader into his tale, describing a cold and pitiless landscape that passes a shadows width from another more primal world of Native American folk tales.


Perhaps most compelling is Zentners meticulous distinction between western faith and the unforgiving representation of northern extremes and fable, Stephen and his stepfather are clergy in this harsh landscape, where a moment off guard will lead to death, The author demonstrates the paperthin veneer of faith against this harsh backdrop while also addressing the psychological and metaphysical juxtaposition with Inuit legend,

Highly recommended.

With an interesting summaryand, okay, breathtaking cover that drew me inI was eager to read Touch, but Im sad to say I havent been able to finish it.
Its shortpages in paperback, and because of that, it needs to dive right into its plot, but it doesntor maybe its more that it does, and the plots just not holding my attention.


The first chapter drags too much telling, not enough showing, some sentences are strangely structured, and the dialogue is stilted, Later in the book, theres a lot of jumping around through time that is more annoying than intriguing, Its the dialogue, though, that frustrated me from the start,

Heres an example from the first chapter with extraneous narrative stripped out:

, . . I had asked my mother about my fathers disfigured hand,

“I was thankful,” she said,

“You were thankful”

“It was only his hand,” my mother said, and she was right,

Like I said, it's stilted,

And then there are lines like this:

"And Mrs, Gasseur was happy to tell you about it,” my mother said, “She was happy as winter berries watching him dunk the boys, ”

Yes, “happy as winter berries, ”

I think Zentner has potential and will probably improve in time, but give him some time, maybe,

sitelink Bravo! Thank you, Mr, Zentner, for a book that was deceptively gentle, thoughtfully written, heartbreaking and so descriptive that several times I felt the need to put a sweater on because of your vivid prose.
You melded reality and the supernatural beautifully together, creating a piece of work that I will read again not only for the story but also on the sheer enjoyment of reading how you put words together.
Sproget er ok. Den er bare så eventyrlig kedelig jeg måtte give op da jeg kedede mig og slet ikke var fanget af fortællingen om denne familie, Found in my mailbox on April/B'day surprise from DJO, Started reading this morning. Got all nostalgic with memories of my father and the sight of him standing on the log booms he brought into our bay on the way to the sawmill logs that would be made into lumber for the new home he built for us when I was.


April,:

I finished this book yesterday, but part way through my reading, I had tweeted on Twitter that I was examining my fingertips for gold dust at every turn of the page.
While a bit of an exaggeration, the truth is I wouldn't have been surprised to find some,

This is a magical book, In fact this book, like all of my books, will become a BookCrossing book and will one day be left out in the wild for someone to find, If my plan works, the next person to read this book WILL find gold dust on their fingers or maybe on their pants! and wonder, . .

I happen to have a little pot ofcarat gold leaf I use to decorate my baking on special occasions, I intend to use a bit to dust the pages of this book, In all likelihood, I will never know who finds the book or whether they even noticed the gold dust but it tickles me to think I might add to the magic of this book for someone.


to be continued when I finish doing my taxes grrrr,