The Seal Wife

by Kathryn Harrison

For the first time in paperback, here is the bestselling novel by “a writer of extraordinary gifts” (Tobias Wolff). Stunning, hypnotic, spare, The Seal Wife tells the story of a young scientist and his consuming love for a woman known only as the Aleut, a woman who refuses to speak.

A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and outside convention. Kathryn Harrison brilliantly re-creates the Alaskan frontier during the period of the First World War as she explores with deep understanding the interior landscape of the human psyche—a landscape eerily continuous with the splendor and terror of the frozen frontier and the storms that blow over the earth and its face.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, The United States Of America, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature

248 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 2003

About the author

Kathryn Harrison is the author of the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water.

She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.

Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, Salon, and other publications.

She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.

Reviews

[Paltia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bigelow the scientist, the Aleut woman, and frontier Alaska in 1915 are the focal points of this strange story. Bigelow seems at odds with himself. He arrives with high hopes to build a weather observatory. He has little knowledge on what his life will truly be like in this almost alien world. The summers are full of daylight but with the turn of the seasons come long hours of darkness, no income and few outlets for boredom. The Aleut woman presents as mysterious. She is symbolic of the unknowable aspects of life in the wilds of nature. She does not speak. Bigelow is drawn to her amd their time together fulfills most, if not all, he is missing in himself and life. Then she disappears. That’s all I’ll reveal. A stark and insightful examination of human nature in all aspects.

[raheleh mansoor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alaska. It seems I've read a few books recently to do with this frozen and dramatic country (see my glowing review for No Night is Too Long). The Seal Wife is set in frontier Alaska, and follows the story of a young meteorologist and his lovestruck obsession with a native woman in a time and place where women are truly scarce. But reading this was like going to one of those fancy, spare restaurants you know you're supposed to be impressed by, but frankly just leave you hungry and a bit grossed out at the weird combinations you endured in the name of gourmet cuisine. There's a lot of graphic sex and fairly spooky happenings--and yet, she has a way with language and sketches some truly beautiful descriptions of the Alaskan wilderness. But just when the story seems to get meaty and the characters interesting, the book pulls back instead of diving deep.

True, Ms. Harrison certainly did a ton of research on early meteorology and frontier Alaska, but I wish she had applied the same diligence to making her characters come alive. They didn't breathe and live for me.

[Vonia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author of The Kiss, her memoir addressing her viewpoint on her voluntary role in a romantic, sexual relationship with her father, Kathryn Harrison is equally shocking in The Seal Wife. Of course, knowing this is fiction, it is a little different. I will admit to having to deter myself from being influenced (in a discriminating way?) by the incest she engaged herself in.

Not surprisingly, then. There is a feminist view here. More specifically, the men are all portrayed rather negatively, through stereotypes (womanizer, abusive, looking only for sex, dominating).

Like the setting (tiny town in Alaska with only a few thousand), the novel is a barren landscape peppered with pockets of eloquent language, several prosaic scenes, little dialogue, but readers will easily be lost on the way and/or in between the maybe worthwhile powerful vignettes.

As she as in her memoir, Harrison writes fiction with what I assess to be more than necessary candor. To be more precise, I admire honesty and straightforward writers, but the details, visual descriptions in some scenes equate to a crude style that I do not.

This is, again like The Kiss, a book about obsession. Bigelow, the protagonist, somehow becomes enamored with The Aleut Woman. She has no other name; she will not/cannot talk to him. Interestingly, she refuses his offers for anything emotionally intimate, including kisses, caresses, fondling, oral sex. Missionary style. She allows herself one orgasm, which she induces, sadly by her own hand while he is inside her. For as long as "She", as Bigelow names her, will leave her door open to allow him to enter, he will bring a gift (usually a pelt, usually a rabbit), she will cook as he watches her (closely), they will lie together in her bed, she will bathe in a pot of snow she has melted, then smoke for a while, all while he observes, sometimes talking little, sometimes unable to pause. Then he will return to his lonely house, still knowing her no better than when he was first granted entrance; no better than the first night he followed her home from Getz's General Merchandise in town, where she gestures for four things he has now memorized (tea, tobacco, toffee, paregoric). She is not a deaf-mute, as she reacts to sounds, allows herself the one cry during orgasm. Even more sad than this, she never really recognizes him, his presence, except in a passive, indirect way. Sometimes she nods, gestures, to all his words, but mostly she merely goes about her life, with him there as an accessory; she even has a way of looking at him that is not looking at him, as if she is looking through him. But she has to at least somewhat acknowledge him as they have sex almost every night. So, it seems this daily sex is enough to have Bigelow grieve as he never has before in his life, not for anyone, even his late father, when, a little more than eight months later, she does not let him in. Not long after, she disappears. From the middle of June until September (when she returns as mysteriously as she left), our protagonist is a study of obsession. He tries to replace She with other girls, with little success There is the prostitute Violet whom figures out his secret, that he wants a girl whom he can fuck without talking. She charges him extra to remain silent. There is Getz's daughter whom lives above The General Merchandise, whom is also not a deaf mute but will not/cannot communicate verbally. Although Miriam is more engaging, especially later on, writing to him, showing affection, etcetera, he cannot be seduced. A different man since The Aleut Woman, he wants her. Any other woman is compared to her; he thinks of her while having sex with other women. No other woman will do.

Throughout all of this, Bigelow does have to make ends meet. This is where Harrison's sedulous research is exemplified, as he is a meteorologist during 195. Scientific vernacular is used; he flies a weather kite, advances in weather & weather technology are referenced.

There are few other characters than the ones already mentioned; maybe a few others that live in the desolate, lonely landscape of the tiny town in Alaska, then the man whom lived in She's abode during the interim when she disappeared, whom was the one to notify Bigelow on her return. Embarrassingly, pretty much the entire town knew about his affairs with The Aleut Woman, as is inevitable in a town of that size. They also commended him on his kite, though. Alas, he never really has much contact with anyone else. his days are full with equations, weather, occasionally a female. A loner. Only twenty six, though. Seems young to be so secluded from society, from life.

I feel like this is an emerging sub genre. Otherwise one I am only now being introduced to, lonely lives in cold, isolated, barren, lonely, desolate settings. Ripe places for grief, death, obsession, drama, darkness. Kathryn Harrison's try with this was admirable, with the needed picturesque language, but needed more than that to impress me overall.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across this book completely by accident -- the title caught my eye when I was sitting in the library. I picked it up and read the whole thing in an afternoon. It's a mesmerizing, atmospheric story of obsession set in the Alaskan frontier. The setting drew me in right away, as did Bigelow's obsession with a woman who refuses to speak, then mysteriously disappears. Harrison captures Bigelow's longing so perfectly it made me ache right along with him as I turned the pages. I'll definitely be reading her other books!

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Seal Wife is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. I just finished it and I wish there was more to read! It's a rather minimalist book with short chapters and sparse dialogue. It uses vignettes to pull the story along. As the book is mostly from inside Bigelow's mind, a self defined loner who is in Anchorage to forecast and study the weather, the book's minimalism beautifully captures the experience of being alone among others, an observer given time to absorb the surroundings and think about things.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating 4-1/2. This very unusual novel is the story of Bigelow, a young mid-western man who is sent to Anchorage, Alaska in 1915 to establish a weather station. He arrives without the barest necessities or knowledge of what is expected of him, thinking that there is an established station, and when he realizes the situation he has to find the land to put the station on, arrange and pay for the construction at horribly inflated prices and in a place where most of the supplies he requires don't exist (i.e, nails), and then he must acquire laborers to build it and figure out how to make them work once that arrive on the jobsite. Meanwhile, the weather station is almost totally cutoff from the town of Anchorage, so that he meets no one and makes no friends. His nearest neighbor is an Aleut woman with whom he is fascinated and eventually creates an unusual relationship, albeit a silent one. After that relationship disintegrates Bigelow, who is socially inept, has to find other ways to survive in the desolate and unforgiving north.

Two of the major themes of this book are sound and silence. Music is both a succor and means by which the weather station gets built. The women in the book are either silent, and their means of and reasons for silence must be discovered by Bigelow, or they are so chatty that he pays them to keep quiet.

Along the way Bigelow discovers that his survival in Alaska is more than food and foul weather gear and is very different than in any other place he has lived.

The writing was excellent, at times lyrical, at times very spare. Bigelow was not at first a very likeable character, but he was sympathetic and his persistence and doggedness grew on me. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books which are a bit off the beaten path.

[Ally Armistead · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just finished reading Kathryn Harrison's "The Seal Wife," and still trying to make head or tails of it.

Unquestionably, the novel is beautifully written, reminiscent of the "grotesque beauty" of Spanish magical realism (lots of gorgeous detail on not-so-gorgeous items, including the smells of groins and feet and erections, and the oddly shaped gaps and bodies of lovers).

Somehow, though, despite this admirable and beautifully gritty feat, Harrison's spare, lean narrative of a scientist obsessed with both building the highest-soaring kite in the world and possessing an Aleut woman who barely acknowledges him is a bit too spare and lean (for this reader anyway). At times, the novel reads like an elongated short story, like a work of art that occupies a canvas far too large for its miniature scope. The novel explores the theme of obsession along only two dimensions (obsession with woman, obsession with kite flying), which makes for a very long 223 pages, stretched very thin.

Had Harrison woven even one more thread into her narrative (perhaps the obsession of loss that haunts the protagonist's back story, but never does so satisfactorily), the book could have earned the canvas size it set out to attempt. Also confusing was the motivation of the protagonist's obsession, and a convincing arrangement of events to render such an obsession feasible and plausible.

Still, a lovely study in prose for all writers. 2.5/3 stars for this reader.

[Kirsten Fleetwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the mother of three small children, I have to snatch my reading moments, and quite often I can only read three or so pages at a time. This book is kind of perfect for this style of reading, as nothing much happens but it is so beautifully written that each page is a pleasure.
Essentially it is a book about sexual obsession and loneliness, I think. Bigelowe is a very young man who works as a meteorologist in Alaska during the period of WWI in Europe. At the time, Alaska is a wild frontier, a bit like something out of a cowboy film, but much much colder. Bigelowe has virtually zero contact with anyone except for a mute Aleut woman, with whom he becomes utterly obsessed. When she disappears without explanation, he passes his time building a massive kite that he fills with scientific instruments and flies miles up into the sky. Along the way he has a sort of affair and a horrible, bizarre accident.
I did enjoy this book, it was quite unlike anything else I've read, and somehow I think Kathryn Harrison captured what it would have been like living in such a harsh environment, and she did it beautifully.

I get the impression that she eats, sleeps, breathes and lives words, her writing is truly exceptional, perhaps even in the same category as Hilary Mantell. It's the sort of writing that leaves you speechless and dreamy, and makes you realise that any small dream of one day writing a novel of your own is utterly hopeless!

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I’m glad I can review other reader’s impressions of- and they certainly run the gamut. It’s a book that on face value seems to be what Bookmaniac noted “Nothing interesting happens during the whole story.” But then Maggie & Nicole kick it up a notch. Maggie posts “Two of the major themes of this book are sound and silence. Music is both a succor and means by which the weather station gets built. The women in the book are either silent, and their means of and reasons for silence must be discovered by Bigelow, or they are so chatty that he pays them to keep quiet” (You go girl!) I think it’s one of those stories that you have to work at it to get something out of it- you have to be willing to look for the themes and threads that run thru the book and decide if it works for you. Personally, I enjoyed Harrison’s writing style and descriptions (I seem to be drawn to short chapter books!) I think there was a lot more symbolism in it than I picked up on (the kite? the towns interest in it? The main character’s sexual meanderings???) This would be a great read for a book club to dissect.

[Bookmaniac70 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Synopsys:

"It is 1915 when Bigelow, a young scientist, is dispatched to build a weather observatory in Anchorage. He is optimistic and enthusiastic, little realizing what life will be like in an arctic railroad town peopled by men and precious few women. The nights are endless and lonely.

Before long he is held sway by a seemingly unknowable woman, Aleut. She is not his only obsession - he designs a kite intended to fly higher than any kite has ever flown."

I wasn`t impressed by this book. The writer was attempting to recreate the atmosphere of ice,remoteness and loneliness of the distant Alaskan land which was fine but the main character and his love story was boring. Nothing interesting happens during the whole story. Bigelow is obviously in a forcing need of a woman during his stay and quite depressed. His connection with the Aletian woman is supposed to be pictured as something unusual and even carrying a kind of hidden beauty but in fact I was bored with their silent meetings and quite unimpressive sex life.

[Andrea Dowd · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The Seal Wife" is one of those books that seems to have potential and then 60 pages in, you're wondering why you're still reading it. The premise is that a young man, Bigelow, is sent up to 1915-era Alaska to set up a weather station. He randomly takes up with a non-communicative native Aleut woman who soon after, leaves without a trace. Aside from the sometimes lovely prose about sounds or the absence of sound, there is nothing I found to like about this story. The background and development of Bigelow is slow and pointless. Again, another novel with an unlikeable protagonist and a boring secondary (and mostly absent) protagonist.

If you feel like you want to read this, you might be better off reading something else.

[Salty Swift · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy smokes.....can you imagine what Alaska looked like at the beginning of the 20th century, when Anchorage was still a hell hole? What a captivating story, full of nuance, love, desperation, exhaustion, centered around a meterologist who decides to move there and falls in love with a native woman, who is mute (or chooses to be mute?). Fantastic work and highly recommended!

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meditation on loneliness and desperation.

[Miquela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kathryn Harrison certainly can write, but that alone was not reason enough for me to finish this book. Like other books that I will occasionally read and review, this one was given to me and, therefore, not something I would normally pick out for myself. That strongly affects my opinion and should be taken into account by those looking for a more objective take on this work.

In short: Interesting time period (early 1900s), place (Alaska), and topic (weather science) rendered totally unenjoyable by a self-consumed, overly-horny idiot of a young 20-something man whom the reader has the displeasure of spending the story with. (I see some people call this erotic; I found it overplayed to the extreme in many cases, as if the author were asking herself at every turn, "Just how I can turn THIS and THIS and THIS into something sexual?) I read and waited for the main character to get interesting or one of the scarce women to show some life but gave up after 100+ pages, preferring to spend my no-so-abundant reading time on something more to my taste and interests.

[Cailin]

DNF at 15%
I just don’t care 🤷‍♀️

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange story that gives readers a lot to think about.

[Jazzy Stephenson · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story had very little substance, other than an intense focus on Bigelow's penis, and the characters had little depth. My main feeling on finishing the book was relief that I didn't have to endure the nothingness of the so-called plot any more.

[Theresa Sjoquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison

Fourth Estate Fiction

Kathryn Harrison's latest novel is set in Anchorage, Alaska. The year is 1915. Bigelow, product of an emotionally starved upbringing, has been ordered by the Weather Bureau for whom he works, to open up for them in Alaska. He must set up a weather forecasting station in the frozen frontier town of Anchorage, a town with it's feet still in the mud, without a port, with only a handful of women and over 3,000 men.

Industrious and intent, Bigelow sets about his task, aware of the privations and poor pay but insufficiently mature at 27, to do anything about either. Life becomes immeasurably richer when he meets the Aleut woman who is mute. Or perhaps not mute, but vocally uncommunicative. She allows him to avail himself of her body but her rigid boundaries and her silence torment his days. When she disappears without warning, taking everything she owns, he is beside himself with the loss and while she never strays far from his obsessive thoughts, Bigelow is obliged to meet his sexual needs in other ways.

The Seal Wife provides a platform for Kathryn Harrison's brilliant characterisation. Bigelow stands out, a black silhouette against the harsh backdrop of the pioneer's Alaska while the Aleut woman, by her very stillness, raises a shadow, a spectre of other worlds, alien minds. The writing is seamless - no lumps over which to stumble.

It's not a book I'd shout out to the world, but it is definitely one I recommend. A strong, quiet keeper with it's psycho-erotic overlay. A very enjoyable read.

Review published in Good Reading Magazine

[Readersaurus · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first, Bigelow's story is mesmerizing, hypnotic. Then, it is impatient, then tedious, like a winter life without conversation. I'll have to think about this one for a while before I know what to say about it.

I've sat on this one for 2 days, trying to decide what to think about The Seal Wife. Here's what I love: What an interesting and unique topic! Weather prediction science in Alaska on the cusp of World War One! Growing boomtowns, the slow sprawl of the railroads. The descriptions, the feel. Harrison gives the reader a near-tangible sense of the cold, the isolation, the big-picture excitement utterly overshadowed by the daily tedium.

Here's what was so disappointing: Bigelow. He's a lump! What drove him to go so far from home? Does he never write to his family in the lower 48? Does he have any interesting thoughts beyond which mute woman is going to lay down for him? Sheesh. Plus, and this one made it impossible to like this book: Even given the time frame, how is it possible that such an educated person who grooves on science, invention, and discovery can desire to choose as his life's partner a woman who has no wish to communicate with him? Bleh.

I was so wishing that She truly was a seal wife, a selkie, perhaps the one who bit him! That would, at least, have put some magic in the story.

[Siv30 · Rating 2 out of 5]

"""בשביל להאט את קצבו, לתת לה זמן לגמור, עליו לחדול מתנועה לגמרי. עליו להשתמש בכל מבחר הדימויים המרגיעים שלו וביחוד אחד מהם, שאין לו מושג מה מקורו, דימוי של כסא ריק על הדרך - כיסא עץ פשוט מן הסוג השכיח במטבחים, נצב לבדו, בלי שולחן ומנורה, איש אינו יושב עליו, באמצע דרך ישרה וסלולה, דרך שאינה הולכת לשום מקום."" ""אישה כלב-ים"" , קתרין הריסון, עמ` 40 הרשומה של שירה על כיסאות והציטוט שהבאתי מהספר האחרון של קתרין הריסון, שאותו קראתי השבוע הזכירו לי שלכל אדם יש כיסא. למעשה הציטוט הזה הוא החלק הטוב ביותר בספר מיותר לחלוטין שחותם את ההתדרדרות המבישה בדרכה האומנותית של הסופרת הזו, שהתחילה בספר אוטוביוגרפי מאוד חזק ""הנשיקה"" וסיימה במחזה אומלל, חסר תוחלת ואמירה. זה בערך מה שיש לי לספר לכם על הספר שקניתי ב- 15 ש""ח. גם אותם הוא לא היה שווה, אלא אם נחשיב תיאורים פורנוגרפיים על זיקפות, עמידות וחדירות, כמשהו ששווה לבזבז עליו כסף. "

[Gail Oberst · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've written a book set in Alaska so I picked up this one to see how Kathryn Harrison managed. I can't say enough about her descriptions of old Anchorage in the early 1900s, which preceded my stay there by 50 or 60 years. So much history; I loved that part of the story, but also how well she captured the impact of light on a person's soul, especially a person fresh from warmer climes. She also wrote clearly about sex and love and rules in the frontier; how raw and wild life can be in a country with so few women. And in the process of telling a story about a man obsessed with an Aleut woman, she told me about a piece of history -- the making of weather maps -- that I rarely considered. I felt enlightened. I felt as if I had lived through the eyes of the main character. Can't wait to read more of Kathryn Harrison.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up in a charity shop knowing nothing about the author but attracted by the innuit woman on the cover. Neither the innuit woman nor her photographer are credited - which about sums up the position of the women in the book. It did call to mind another woman writer of arctic adventures - Andrea Barrett - and there is some connection there in the viewpoint of a man's point of view but written by a woman. I found this less satisfying, a tale spun out to a novel's length, some disquiet as though she takes advantage of her characters, and the characters in the book not coming to life for me. But some really good writing in there to make the reading worth while.

[nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing.

Get a glimpse of Alaska circa 1914 when the railroad is on the brink of existence, which forces white people unto the lives of "Natives," as one white character says.

The idea of silenced women appears throughout Harrison's work. Here, in two ways.

Like Envy, the narrator is omniscient but the story "feels like" it belongs to the protagonist, Bigelow, a weather man of ancient proportions (um, he's no suit-wearin, smile-flashin Sam Champion).

Interesting parallels and twists. And sex.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much enjoyed. Sparse but powerful writing made the book flow very nicely. The main characters' powerful longing for a woman who could not express herself well was a theme worth reading about.

[☕Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ratings (1 to 5)
Writing: 5
Plot: 4
Characters: 5
Emotional impact: 4
Overall rating: 4.5

[Joy Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bleak, interesting with insight into selfish obsession

[Keli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Synopsis- A stunning and hypnotic novel, The Seal Wife tells the story of a young scientist and his consuming love for a woman known as Aleut. In 1915, Bigelow is sent to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage, Alaska, and finds that nothing has prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town of over two thousand men and only a handful of women, of winter nights twenty hours long. And nothing can protect him from obsession-both with a woman, who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and with the weather kite he designs to fly higher than any kite has ever flown before, a kite with which Bigelow plans to penetrate and know not just the sky but the heavens.

A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and outside conventions. Harrison brilliantly re-creates the Alaskan frontier during the period of the first World War and in lyrical prose explores the interior landscape of the psyche and human emotions - a landscape eerily continuous with the splendor and terror of the frozen frontier, the storms that blow over the earth and its face.

Review- I first read Kathryn Harrison's A Thousand Orange Trees and was bowled over by her prose, her female protagonists and her treatment of the corporeal. Her mesmerising prose carried on in The Binding Chair. Another fantastic exploration of the role of women and their bodies in society. So I had real hopes for this...Her prose is still fantastic but I just lacked any connection to any of the characters.
The mc, Bigelow, is weird. He's essentially a nonviolent stalker. I didn't like him and we had to spend all of the novel together.
The main female protagonist says nowt in the entire novel. This would be okay if we got a little inkling into her. But she's just a massive mystery. It doesn't help that her entire persona is portrayed through the eyes of the creepy weirdo. But everyone we meet is seen through Bigelow's eyes and because he is aloof and detached outside of his own obsessions we don't really get to know any of them.
I bought this book 13 years ago from a charity shop in Jersey. I kept putting it off. Sadly, it's not been worth the wait.

Rating - Two and a half disappointed by the silence stars (rounded to three). ⭐⭐⭐

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Devoured the book, couldn't put it down.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Really liked it, consumed within days
⭐⭐⭐ - Enjoyed a fair bit, better than average
⭐⭐ - Meh
⭐ - Absolute drivel

[Sasha Vaughan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Set in Alaska in 1915, the book reads much like the landscape it is set in: cold, uninviting and haunting.

This was one of the first books I picked after a long hiatus from our local public library and honestly I was intrigued by its cover: a picture of an Aleut woman. I get absorbed and enjoy novels that take a deep dive into cultural landscapes other than my own and I assumed that this would be about the Aleut way of life. Then, further to reading the reviews on the back cover, the author’s other novel, The Binding Chair, I was reassured that this would possibly be a novel about the intricate details of the Aleut people.

Well, it could not have been more opposite. After begrudgingly getting through half the book, I decided to read up on the Author. I was shocked to learn that she wrote a memoir a few year earlier about her incestuous affair with her biological father. I realised that much of the book must be tainted by this experience; a detached erotism with no plot/purpose and somewhat disturbing. The main character is an unstable, distracted scientist unconcerned by the daily necessities of life and the Aleut woman remained as elusive as the image of her on the front cover. I could not grasp what about Aleut woman intrigued Bigelow so, other than him wanting to control her and him wanting to gain some weird form of companionship in the lonely frontier town of Anchorage.

A book had the most unlikeable characters I have ever come to read and peppered with very little dialogue, this books reads possibly much like the frozen wilderness of Alaska.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bigelow ist ein Wettermann, der beweisen will, dass die Luft über Alaska wärmer ist als die über Nairobi. Dafür will er einen riesigen Drachen bauen, mit dem er Wetterdaten aufnehmen kann. In der kleinen Stadt am Rand der Welt, in die er für seine Forschung geschickt wurde, findet er zwar perfekte Bedingungen für seine Arbeit, aber keinen Anschluss. Aber das stört ihn nicht, denn Menschen irritieren ihn eher. Dann trifft er eine Aleutin und beginnt plötzlich seine Einsamkeit zu hinterfragen.

Würde Bigelows Geschichte für sich allein stehen, hätte sie mir gut gefallen. Seine Betrachtungen über sich, seine Arbeit, seine Umgebung und auch die Menschen darin, haben mir gut gefallen. Aber seine Besessenheit für die Aleutin, deren Namen ich nie erfahren habe, hat mich abgestoßen. Denn er benutzt sie, ohne wirklich über sie und ihre Gefühle nachzudenken. Wenn er an sie denkt, dann nur wie über einen Spiegel, der sein Verhalten reflektiert. Als sie das Dorf verlässt, stürzt er in ein tiefes Loch. Das ist keine Liebe, auch wenn Bigelow das denken will. Es ist etwas Anderes, für das ich keinen Namen finden kann.

Eine seltsame Geschichte, bei der vieles, zu vieles, leider ungesagt bleibt.

[Ofelia]

Last year Kathryn Harrison became a new favourite author after I read Enchantments and then The Kiss by her. Her writing is so insightful and clever, just as it is lyrically beautiful. However, I didn’t recognize that writing in The Seal Wife. It may be a contributor that I was quite preoccupied during my reading, but at the same time I thought the book was incoherent and scattered; I had a very hard time keeping up with the story. I also thought the writing stale and insipid. Furthermore the storyline had little in it that kept my interest, half of the book felt like a field guide to meteorology and all its measuring equipments. And the other half of the story, about Bigelow and his unrequited love/obsession with the aleut woman wasn’t interesting enough to compensate. At times, I could see a glimpse of the author that I so adored, I just would’ve hoped to get more of it.

I may give the book another try, as I said it could be my own state of mind that interfered with my opinion of the book. Nonetheless I doubt that it would’ve become a favourite of mine if the circumstances would’ve been different.