After the success of her 2010 novel about an intersex child, Annabel, the Canadian author Kathleen Winter has turned her hand to nonfiction in her account of being writer-in-residence on a boat journey across the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a legendary (and hazardous) voyage she undertook in 2010. Travelling with an assortment of passengers including biologists, archaeologists and the musician Nathan Rogers – son of Stan, who wrote a song about the eponymous passage – her book is as much an exploration of her own past and psyche as it is a breathtaking series of vistas and encounters.
The literary sub-genre of “writer discovers truths about themselves while on a journey” is well-worn and often dull, so Winter deserves credit for unusual and often amusing anecdotes about her trip, not least an account of her haplessly buying an Inuit doll for a hundred dollars in an attempt to fit in. Her keen novelist’s eye brings immediacy and vibrancy to many of the encounters, and if some of the extended sequences of dialogue with her fellow voyagers feel like a literary conceit rather than literal reportage, they are nonetheless fresh and enjoyable.
Winter’s book isn’t perfect. Some of the writing feels overwrought, with an occasional straining for profundity (a typical line is “what appear as closed circles can be coils of a spiral opening out in a pattern of growth”) that feels as if it’s the product of over-consideration rather than spontaneous observation. And some may be frustrated by the lengthy personal detours into her past. Nonetheless, this deserves praise for an unusual and original take on the travel memoir, and by the end there is a real sense of an epic journey having been taken, by both the writer and reader.
Boundless is published by Jonathan Cape, £16.99 Click here to buy it for £13.59
