Lost Geography

I have'nt read this book as of yet but looked up reviews for it because I will be taking a form and theory fiction writing class in the spring taught by Charlotte Bacon. I wanted to see reviews of her book and what her writing style is like. I am excited that it seems to be a generally well liked book, but nervous because I don't usually write in a depressing manner. Well, I'm sure I will learn a lot!! I will let everyone know how her class is!

Bacon's first novel is beautiful and poetic. All of her characters touched a place in my heart, and when I was done reading I still wanted more. In this story of four generations of women, I was most drawn to the story of Margaret and her Scottish husband. It was lovely and heartbreaking.

Charlotte Bacon has written a fine book about sex, death, grief, joy, fire, water, air, dust. Ranging from Depression-era Canada to Ataturk's Turkey to Imperial India to 60s Paris to London during the blitz and finally to New York, this wise and wonderful persian carpet of a book draws together the elements of life and shows us the regeneration that proceeds from loss and the muted joys of survival. And in the age of the Nucelar family, it reminds us of the essential role that families play in helping its members bear the strains of life. It is simultaneously a dark book and one full of refracted underwater light, all shown through the exquisite prism of Bacon's prose. I don't think it rash to compare this book to The Shipping News and The English Patient. Bacon's images are fresh and startling and you recognize as you read that you have the real thing here: a new way of looking at the world.

Images of maps, bits of geography float through this excellent story of four generations of women--Margaret, Hilda, Danielle, and Sophia. Margaret is a nurse in Saskatchewan when she meets her future husband Davis, a Scots immigrant searching for his fortune in the new world. Davis, felled by a fever, changes course and settles down as a farmer-husband-parent. Daughter Hilda chooses to move onto Toronto where she makes a different kind of life with an antiques dealer. Margaret's granddaughter Danielle leaves her mother Hilda and migrates to Paris where she meets Osman, a dealer in antique oriental rugs. After Danielle dies, Osman and their two children Sasha and Sophia move to New York to begin again.On the surface, the stories of these women's lives do not contain obvious morals or seem to have a purpose other than their recounting. However, this is a tale not only of shifting landscape, but of the search for one's place in the geography of the heart. It puts me in mind of the short-story novels of Alice Munro--'Friend of My Youth' or 'Lives of Girls and Women.' The richness of the text is like a Bazaar. Colorful and original images abound--the grandmother who is bent like a cipher and feels like a raspy husk when she hugs you; the former library-cum crater, filled with mushrooms feeding on mouldering books and lined with Queen Anne's Lace; the little boxes filled with copper pennies turned green, stacked and hidden behind the old kitchen stove--and rugs, maps, and mellow old wooden antiques. Bacon's writing is as rich as the antique Yatak pictured on the book jacket.

Lost Geography is a beautifully written book. The discriptions of place, and the thoughts of each character are so poetic and unique it took my breath away. It is a generational story about the way we fall in love, how fate and place and those we meet shape us, how our plans may get changed but life can lead us to the unexpected, that even through pain there is joy. Charlotte Bacon weaves us a tapestry with her words and characters. You should read it.