vendredi, octobre 26, 2007

QUINNEHTUKQUT


Allez, le week-end. Feu de bois. Lecture.

Set in a region of northern New Hampshire that in the 1830s declared itself an independent nation, JoshuaHarmon's debut novel traces the real and imagined travels of Martha Hennessy, a girl wishing for a life beyond her family's farm. QUINNEHTUKQUT interweaves Martha's story with those of dreamers and drifters whose lives intersect hers: an American soldier scarred by the first World War, a mythical and murderous tramp seeking lost Indian gold, a man haunted by his memories of Byrd's expeditions to Antarctica, an industrialist longing to become a woodsman, and an old woman forced to leave her home due to the planned flooding of a valley. A vivid study of the New England landscape, Quinnehtukqut reveals how people inhabit place and how place inhabits people.

"Joshua Harmon's magical postmodern epic ranges across time, threading fragments of oral history, diaries, and news accounts into parallel tales of mystery, wonder, and tragedy"--Jayne AnnePhillips.

Quinnehtukqut evokes the impressionistic sweep and lyrical beauty of The English Patient alongside the brilliant idiosyncratic vitality of Mason and Dixon. But Joshua Harmon is a thoroughly original writer, who is doing no less than reinventing storytelling before our eyes, by means of a dazzling, ever-shifting formal innovation, the primary allegiance of which is always to music. Quinnehtukqut is mesmerizing line by line." - Mary Caponegro

"Through a series of loosely linked fictions that toy with both the mythologizing and the dislocating effects of language, Quinnehtukqut provides a mesmerizing picture of a place over time. Teasing a complex and compelling narrative out of a vast array of voices, documentation, and styles, this is historical fiction at its most eccentric and best."
- Brian Evenson