Cape Breton Road - Softcover

Macdonald, D R

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099289652 ISBN 13: 9780099289654

Publisher: Vintage, 2001

Synopsis

It's a long and winding road out of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and many of its inhabitants never really get away, held by ties of memory and blood. Innis Corbett, finds himself back there, aged nineteen, deported from Boston to the isolated Gaelic-speaking community where he was born. A joy-rider turned car thief, with no money , no wheels and only a handful of marijuana seeds with which to make his fortune in a hostile environment, he takes refuge with his bachelor uncle, a roustabout with a taste for drink and an eye for pretty women. In this strange, harsh landscape which has shaped his family and which both absorbs and challenges him, Innis is forced to work out who he is. His plan to escape and head west is foiled by his uncle's vigilance - and the weather. Caught in a three-cornered relationship with the woman who comes to live with his uncle, and tempted by a sexy black Cadillac, the discovery of his secret pot plantation is not all Innis has to fear. With terrible inevitability, he is pushed towards a deed that would violate his connection to the land and the Highland culture he came out of. This is an exceptional debut by a writer with an unerring eye for landscape and tragedy that is bred in the bone.

About this title

Review:

D.R. MacDonald's debut novel centres around the explosive relationship between man and nature; men whose souls are fading as surely as their history and culture seeps away, and a nature so fiercely uncompromising it takes on a spectral, sinister force of its own.

Deported from Boston for habitual car theft, 19-year-old Innis finds himself back in his native Nova Scotia, on remote Cape Breton Island, where MacDonald himself was born and where a wrong turn could cost a life in the dense, snow-laden woods. Holed up in the old family farmhouse with his reluctant uncle, spiky TV-repair-man, Starr, whose penchant for booze and girls leaves little time for supervising an errant nephew, Innis looks for an early escape route. His mind soon focuses on the promise of Spring and with it the chance to plant his attic-nurtured pot seedlings way up in the hills, far from prying eyes. But, in the way of blindly arrogant youth, Innis doesn't reckon with forces as strong and stronger than nature.

As the ice slowly melts around him and the sun bakes the earth, the forces of love and trust have devastatingly destructive effects on Innis and those around him. With few distractions--the nearest town is a car-ride away--Innis is drawn into the community, old Gaelic-speaking families, whose language and way of life may be melting with the snow, but whose sense of their surroundings gives them an inner knowledge no outsider could learn. Then, unexpectedly, a wild card is delivered into the heart of their harsh, male world: Claire, pretty, frivolous and fun seeking, moves into the room next to Innis, and nothing is the same again.

Cape Breton Road is as much an elegy to a fading way of life, frozen in time, as it is a deeply disturbing lament on 21st-century man and his search for identity, belonging and purpose. --Carey Green

Review:

PRAISE FOR "CAPE BRETON ROAD"

"This is a book of heart-stopping beauty. D.R. MacDonald is an exceptional writer."--Alistair MacLeod
"Long, breathless sentences rushing, with expression and idea, fill the
book. . . . Poetic."--"The Toronto Sun"
"An auspicious debut for a talented writer."--"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"
PRAISE FOR "CAPE BRETON ROAD"
"This is a book of heart-stopping beauty. D.R. MacDonald is an exceptional writer."--Alistair MacLeod
"Long, breathless sentences rushing, with expression and idea, fill the
book. . . . Poetic."--"The Toronto Sun"
"An auspicious debut for a talented writer."--"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"
PRAISE FOR CAPE BRETON ROAD
"This is a book of heart-stopping beauty. D.R. MacDonald is an exceptional writer."--Alistair MacLeod
"Long, breathless sentences rushing, with expression and idea, fill the
book. . . . Poetic."--The Toronto Sun
"An auspicious debut for a talented writer."--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PRAISE FOR CAPE BRETON ROAD

"This is a book of heart-stopping beauty. D.R. MacDonald is an exceptional writer."--Alistair MacLeod
"Long, breathless sentences rushing, with expression and idea, fill the
book. . . . Poetic."--The Toronto Sun
"An auspicious debut for a talented writer."--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099289652
• ISBN 13: 9780099289654
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304