literary fiction – Page 36 – What Cathy Read Next…

I’m delighted to be co-hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for We Were the Salt of the Sea by Roxanne Bouchard, translated by David Warriner, and to share my review of this fascinating literary crime novel. Do check out the review by my co-host Kirsty at Curious Ginger Cat. You will also find some wonderful reviews of the book at previous stops on the tour (see tour schedule at the bottom of this post).

About the Book

As Montrealer Catherine Day sets foot in a remote fishing village and starts asking around about her birth mother, the body of a woman dredges up in a fisherman’s nets. Not just any woman, though: Marie Garant, an elusive, nomadic sailor and unbridled beauty who once tied many a man’s heart in knots. Detective Sergeant Joaquin Morales, newly drafted to the area from the suburbs of Montreal, barely has time to unpack his suitcase before he’s thrown into the deep end of the investigation.

On Quebec’s outlying Gaspé Peninsula, the truth can be slippery, especially down on the fishermen’s wharves. Interviews drift into idle chit-chat, evidence floats off with the tide and the truth lingers in murky waters. It’s enough to make DS Morales reach straight for a large whisky…

Format: ebook, paperback (300 pp.) Publisher: Orenda Books
Published: 28^th February 2018 Genre: Literary Fiction, Crime

Purchase Links*
Publisher ǀ Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops) *links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find We Were the Salt of the Sea on Goodreads

My Review

‘You go to sea because you’re a drifter among others and you only feel at home in the silence of the wind.’

Although the reader never meets Marie Garant in life, her vibrant presence pervades the book because of the impact she had on so many of the inhabitants of the Gaspé. Even in death, she is the invisible force which drives events.

The author does a brilliant job of conveying the tight-knit, almost claustrophobic atmosphere of the small fishing community. It’s a place where everyone knows everyone else, their daily routines, their histories…their secrets. Although there are strong bonds of friendship and family, the most powerful common bond is that of the sea. It’s the villagers’ livelihood, their food source, their recreation, their awareness of time even – not just the change of seasons but the rhythm of passing of time. ‘He waited for two waves to go by, time enough for the sea to keep washing gently over the shore, erasing the memories in the sand.’ The sea is their constant companion and frequently, as it turns out, their implacable enemy robbing the community of many souls over the years.

‘They’re always harping on about people being the salt of the earth….Well, doesn’t that make us mariners the salt of the sea?’

The sea is used as a metaphor for life, for emotional experience, for the search for fulfilment. ‘She’s the wave that drags you away from shore and then carries you home. A whirlpool of indecisiveness, hypnotising, holding you captive. Until the day she chooses you. I suppose that’s what passion is…a groundswell that sweeps you up and carries you further out than you thought, then washes you up on the hard sand like an old fool.’

There is wonderful descriptive writing about the sea and the translator, David Warriner, has done a superb job of retaining the lyrical quality of Roxanne Bouchard’s writing. Some of the characters have distinctive modes of speech (“Christ in a chalice”) and, at times, I found the dialogue didn’t flow quite as naturally as the rest of the writing. However, I loved some of the imaginative descriptions such as this one as Catherine sits on the wharf watching the fishing boats tied up there. ‘They were dozing there empty, gently rocking to the rhythm of the waves, snoring against the wharf. They barely raised an eyelid when I arrived. They didn’t care. Sighing, they slipped back into slumber, like fat, lazy cats sinking into the great blue cushion of water.’ Isn’t that simply brilliant?

Tasked with investigating the death of Marie Garant, Sergeant Morales, newly transferred from the city, encounters a wall of silence. He begins to question his relationship with his absent wife, finding himself drawn to Catherine, another outsider who is on her own quest for answers. Faced with prevarication and obfuscation, Morales starts to wonder whether he still has what it takes to unravel the mystery of Marie Garant’s life and death.

I really enjoyed We Were the Salt of the Sea, not just for the intriguing mystery at the heart of the book but for the wonderful, imaginative writing. I would love to see other books by Roxanne Bouchard translated into English.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of publishers Orenda Books in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Lyrical, suspenseful, mystery

Try something similar…The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey (click here to read my review)

About the Author

Ten years or so ago, Roxanne Bouchard decided it was time she found her sea legs. So she learned to sail, first on the St Lawrence River, before taking to the open waters off the Gaspé Peninsula. The local fishermen soon invited her aboard to reel in their lobster nets, and Roxanne saw for herself that the sunrise over Bonaventure never lies. We Were the Salt of the Sea is her fifth novel, and her first to be translated into English. She lives in Quebec.

Connect with Roxanne

Publisher Website ǀ Author Website ǀ Twitter ǀ Goodreads

About the Translator

David Warriner translates from French and nurtures a healthy passion for Franco, Nordic and British crime fiction. Growing up in deepest Yorkshire, he developed incurable Francophilia at an early age. Emerging from Oxford with a modern languages degree, he narrowly escaped the graduate rat race by hopping on a plane to Canada – and never looked back. More than a decade into a high-powered translation career, he listened to his heart and turned his hand again to the delicate art of literary translations. David has lived in France and Quebec, and now calls beautiful British Colombia home.

Website ǀ Twitter ǀ Goodreads

From A Low And Quiet Sea Blog Tour Poster

I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan and to bring you my review of this powerful novel. From a Low and Quiet Sea is described as Donal Ryan’s most expansive book to date, set partially in Syria and partially in the familiar territory of rural Ireland.

About the Book

‘Can you imagine how that would be? If a tree is starving, its neighbours will send it food. No one really knows how this can be, but it is. Nutrients will travel in the tunnel made of fungus from the roots of a healthy tree to its starving neighbour, even one of a different species. Trees live, like you and me, long lives, and they know things. They know the rule, the only one that’s real and must be kept. What’s the rule? You know. I’ve told you lots of times before. Be kind.’

Farouk’s country has been torn apart by war.
Lampy’s heart has been laid waste by Chloe.
John’s past torments him as he nears his end.

The refugee. The dreamer. The penitent. From war-torn Syria to small-town Ireland, three men, scarred by all they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home. Each is drawn towards a powerful reckoning, one that will bring them together in the most unexpected of ways.

Praise for From a Low and Quiet Sea

‘A magus of a writer’ Sebastian Barry
‘The product of a life-enhancing talent’ Guardian
‘Among the great contemporary chroniclers’ Independent
‘It’s furious, it’s moving, it’s darkly funny, it punches you right in the gut’ New York Times ‘Dazzling’ Mariella Frostrup, BBC Radio 4

Format: ebook, hardcover (192 pp.) Publisher: Transworld Digital/Doubleday Published: 22^nd March 2018 Genre: Literary Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK local bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find From a Low and Quiet Sea on Goodreads

My Review

Convergence and interconnectedness seem to have been a theme of several books I’ve read recently. For example, Entanglement by Katy Mahood (my ‘try something similar’ recommendation below) and Oliver Loving by Stefan Merrill Block (click here to read my review). Of course, knowing that disparate storylines will converge at some point in a book can mean the reader spends the whole time anticipating that convergence or looking out for subtle clues as to how it will come about. Can I just say, don’t bother with this book, because the author achieves the bringing together of the different strands in an unexpected and quite unsettling way. In addition, to think about it too much would, to my mind, mar the enjoyment of the journey and the wonderful writing.

The prose with its long, flowing sentences gives the reader the sense they are inside the heads of the characters, experiencing their thought processes, impressions and feelings as they occur. The author creates some imaginative metaphors, often incorporating the sea, water or tidal forces.

‘He knew the rhythms of the house and the two people below him, the syncopated beats of them, the tides that flowed and ebbed with no regularity but with a strange and comforting predictability’.

‘…he’d imagine the panic that rose inside him to be rising water against a lock gate, and he’d picture the wheel of the lock gate being turned, and he’d imagine the flow through the lock, the downward easing, the levelling.’

The foolishness that swept through him, more every day, it was like a rogue current below a flat, still surface, a deadly undertow that could drag you down to perdition.’

I also loved this description of how a rumour with no truth to it can spread if set in motion by skilled but unscrupulous hands.

‘My story, my something out of nothing, replicated itself like a monster virus, mutating to strengthen itself, rearranging the component parts and properties to better survive each retelling and gain in size and virulence; it leaped the border into Kerry; it travelled back the road into Limerick City; it forded the estuary to Clare.’

The sections told from the point of view of Lampy and John, with their use of vernacular and colloquialisms, perfectly capture the rhythm and lilt of an Irish accent. Can I mention at this point the wonderful character that is Lampy’s grandfather? His telling of tall stories and slightly embarrassing jokes (that are meant to seem spontaneous but have actually been well rehearsed), don’t help Lampy’s low self-esteem. However, they actually disguise his grandfather’s inability to express the affection he really feels for his grandson.

Although their life paths initially appear to have no prospect of overlapping, each of the three men – Farouk, Lampy and John – share the experience of loss and betrayal. However, their psychological and emotional reactions to what they have experienced will be very different. In two, their response will probably earn the reader’s sympathy and understanding. In the third, the response may be, like my own, rather different.

At the end of the book there is retribution but brought about unwittingly in a way that one suspects will cause further psychological scars. However, there is one small spark of hope for the future. I am so grateful to have been introduced to the assured, beautiful writing of Donal Ryan.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of publishers, Transworld/Doubleday, and Anne Cater at Random Things Through My Letterbox, in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Compelling, powerful, lyrical

Try something similar…Entanglement by Katy Mahood (click here to read my review)

About the Author

Donal Ryan is from Nenagh in County Tipperary. His first three novels, The Spinning Heart, The Thing About December and All We Shall Know, and his short story collection A Slanting of the Sun, have all been published to major acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature (Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was recently voted ‘Irish Book of the Decade’. His fourth novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, will be published in March 2018. A former civil servant, Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children just outside Limerick City.

Connect with Donal

Amazon Author Page ǀ Goodreads