A tale of mystery and healing from the Canadian forests, where Nature can be nasty and men can easily go mad.
We’re in the Canadian uplands, a landscape of lakes and forests, cabins and canoes, hunters and hunted. The Healer is a young teenage girl with a gift she finds hard to bear: she seems able to heal the sick, to drive out foul spirits. Her father is a brutal man: strong, tempestuous and violent, he finds it hard to accommodate his daughter’s abilities in the way she would wish. A journalist, our principal narrator, comes between them, sent by his magazine to secure a story.
Entranced by the girl and the emptiness of the land, he buys from a persuasive realtor the derelict lakeside cabin which becomes the centre of the action, as all three main characters swirl into a vortex of vengeance and violence – violence reflected in a landscape of storms and floods of terrifying power. Hollingshead proves himself a writer who knows the lethal force latent in the natural world. And that man is an animal too.
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From the reviews for The Healer:
‘A mad-tongued Gothic tale, a blend of high drama and sly, dark marvels’
New York Times
‘There are some wonderfully poetic and resonant images in this novel; the descriptions of the Canadian landscape are incandescent and some of the set-pieces both hilarious and disturbing.’
Francis Gilbert, The Times
‘Hollingshead does not burden The Healer with solutions but allows the unfathomable impulses of love and hurt to enmesh these fractured and dislocated lives. He writes with a governing absence of philosophy that vividly recalls the nihilisms of Cormac McCarthy. There are resonances of E.Annie Proulx, too, in his poetically compressed prose that imagines stark landscapes as richly unyielding as their beleaguered inhabitants. This is a substantial book and a swift read despite the gravity of its tale. Hollingshead’s unhysterical comprehension of the human capacity for harm is convincing and unsettling; such raw exposure of emotion lends an edge of agoraphobia to his isolated, northern community.’ James Urquhart, Guardian
‘From the first decapitated chipmunk [Hollingshead] reveals himself as a David Lynch of prose. Once the characters are pursuing one another through a vast expanse of Canadian woodland, Hollingshead piles on the menace... Excellent fodder for that remote camping holiday.’ Patrick Gale, Daily Telegraph
‘There are some wonderfully poetic and resonant images in this novel; the descriptions of the Canadian landscape are incandescent and some of the set-pieces both hilarious and disturbing.’ Francis Gilbert, The Times
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Book Description Trade Paperback. Condition: Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. Trade Paperback with scuffing, edgewear and a slight tilt to the right. "The title character, Caroline Troyer, is a young woman from rural Canada whose inexplicable curative powers have attracted the notice of 32-year-old journalist Timothy Wakelin, who comes to the remote mining town of Grant, Ontario, to meet her." ; 309 pages. Seller Inventory # 3741
Book Description Trade Paperback. Condition: As New. No Jacket. First Edition. SIGNED to the title page by the author. As new, unread, and not remaindered. Small blemish to the front wrap and small non-penetrating scratch to rear wrap. From the multi-award winning author comes a novel that is."a blend of high drama and sly, dark marvels." Size: 16mo - over 5¾" - 6¾" tall. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 000473
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Soft cover, very good condition. Greg Hollingshead's remarkable novel of betrayal and redemption explores the farthest reaches of human experience, in a story that will immediately capture fans of Bedlam, his latest masterwork. When Tim Wakelin heads north, in search of a story about a local healer, he enters a world that is real yet strange. Drawn into a beautiful but unforgiving landscape, he quickly finds his veneer of control stripped away. This novel of unbridled power and original sensibility explores the fine line between madness and sanity, and between physical and spiritual reality. Size: 8vo - over 7 in- 9 in Tall. Book. Seller Inventory # 129105