Sea Hearts
Posted by Niall Harrison
27 January 2012
Gary K. Wolfe's Locus review of Margo Lanagan's new novel:
This odd but compelling narrative structure, with each successive tale opening up and commenting on earlier ones, gives an almost panoramic sense of passing generations for what is not a very long novel (the effect is something like that of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, with its seven stories of different characters in different generations illuminating each other until the whole becomes a coherent narrative). Given Lanagan’s distinctive language-bending style, it’s something of a challenge for her to differentiate the six narrative voices, though we quickly come to realize that, while they mostly share the island’s dialect, each tone is quite specific to the character – Daniel’s growing indignation at the plight of his and the other ‘‘mams,’’ his father’s weak efforts at self-rationalization, Misskaella’s bitter loneliness that leads her to seize what power she can from a community that both despises and needs her. Along the way, Lanagan develops, without benefit of an external narrator or sidebar lectures, some sharp insights into female passivity and victimization (at least on the part of the seal-women), male fecklessness and almost helpless self-absorption (early on, some of them pack their sea-wives away in cabinets the way an alcoholic hides his booze), the complex relationships of parents and children, and the fragile negotiations between community and nature. Except for a few comments from distrustful mainlanders, we learn about Rollrock entirely from within, and for a while we seem to live there. It’s not always a pleasant vacation, but it’s a deeply illuminating one, and Sea Hearts may eventually be seen as some sort of masterpiece.
I'm always wary of the m-word, but I have to admit that the my initial rather stunned reaction has not worn off; the book still feels incredibly fresh in my mind, two months after reading it.
