Man of Bone

by Alan Cumyn

Winner, Ottawa-Carleton Book Award Shortlisted, Trillium Award Man of Bone has a thriller's taste for blood, but Alan Cumyn delivers something a heart-wrenching portrait of an ordinary Canadian jerked into third-world terrorism. Bill Burridge, his wife and their little son have moved to the "island paradise" of Santa Irene on Bill's first diplomatic posting. At the short-staffed embassy, he is thrown, almost unbriefed, into work he scarcely understands. After less than two weeks, while driving alone on a "safe" highway to an afternoon of badminton in the country, he is snatched by revolutionaries. Against his will, Burridge turns out under torture to be a "man of bone" who can't give up and die. His ignorance and low status make him useless to his captors, but they can't simply let him go. They continue to torture him until, distracted by other battles, they abandon him and his keeper in a mountain village. Suddenly one day helicopters rake the village with gunfire, and the whole situation turns upside down. Alan Cumyn is well known for creating men with tender hearts and iron wills. Bill Burridge, angry at God for making him live, keeps his wits by remembering his and Maryse's courtship and marriage and their life with young Patrick. Although he isolates this part of himself from his torturers, he and his beloved family discover when he returns to Ottawa, barely alive, that "living happily ever after" will be more complex than they could have imagined.

186 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1998

Reviews

[Dennis Bolen · Rating 3 out of 5]

In an energetic attempt to put more edge into Canadian writing, Alan Cumyn attacks us with a tale told by a hooded hostage who is in stages beaten, tortured, starved and left for dead. The predicament is interspersed with the story of the prisoner’s remembrances of things present, past and forgotten. There is a fast pace, scenes of depravity and terror. At times the situation is so dire there is a severe possibility that our narrator is actually dead: ‘I hate it when teeth fall out. They rattle loose and then get caught in the back of my throat...’ All this should be riveting. Man of Bone isn’t quite.

Most of the time the interior monologue is familiar to anyone who ever watched and became slightly bored with The Prisoner series on TV, or even some of the more hackneyed episodes of X Files. The tone is of surreal pain, hallucinatory affliction so severe most of the time that reality and dream are indistinguishable. This is both a feature and a drawback to Mr. Cumyn’s effort, as by the time we have experienced a few entertaining mental mis-perceptions the device becomes an out of control scatter-gun, forcing us to question many things which would be more powerful without the mystery.

This unfortunate glitch proves most damaging toward the end when the death of an important sympathetic character is not to be rightly believed or disbelieved, thus weakening the themes of pity and sorrow. The subject is political repression, ignorance and violence. We are in a country with leaden bureaucrats, absolute corruption, stalled traffic and merciless noon-day heat. Bodies thrown in the harbour by the secret police bloat and float toward the tourist beaches. There is also the uniquely Canadian dread of being mistaken for an American.

But the palpable invention of the setting--A South China Sea island called Santa Irene--and the rather pedestrian origins of the ardently white-bread protagonist largely lighten the intended weightiness of Mr. Cumyn’s social commentary. Yes there are repressive regimes in the world, yes their oppressed partisans and maniacal militarists may not have our human rights values and may kidnap us and treat us badly for concomitantly idiotic reasons. What else is new? As a story of the effect of brutalization upon one man the book has real effect. But the man in question should be more interesting than this one, whose wife-and-child, Ottawa-raised-and-educated normalcy takes up quite a bit of the reading.

Goose Lane Editions designs a great look to their volumes. This one is one of the most catchy and effective cover designs I’ve seen. Likewise the type face and interior layout. But where was the editor? Virtually every page features glaring examples of the ‘Suddenly, a shot rang out...’ school of dumb prose writing. What with the good pace, occasionally snappy dialogue and well-wrought suspense such sloppy writing need not have mitigated the undeniable power of Man of Bone.

[Sherry · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the novel, Man of Bone, I found not much interesting or exciting elements in it. At first, I choose this book because its cover attracts me a lot, which has a man without eyes or mouth, and it gives me a terrible feeling. The green colour conveys a tension to me and I wonder what happen in the story. But later, I found an idea that I should not choose a book base on its cover again.
This book confused me at very beginning and I wondered what really happened on the characters. Unlike other book, Man of Bone has no sign to tell me about the chapter and I felt confused when the plot switches from real to dream or from dream to real. It just has some empty lines between two different periods. For example, Bill recalled his childhood when he played with his friends and after about three empty lines, it switches to his date with girlfriend when he was in high school. The first time I read this book, I felt very chaotic and wanted to sleep.
And the plot is not interesting as well. Main character Bill is a immigrate officer and he tells us his experience that he is captured by third world terrorism. Sometimes he is in hallucinations and sometimes he is awake. Most plots show us how he remembers his family, best friend and important experience in his life. Sometimes it will change to present and describe how Bill feels pain. For example, the author describes how Bill tries his best to make his finger moving with 7 detailed pages. The plot is totally different from the image for me when I chose this book, which should have more details about planning, escaping, and solving difficulties.
But it also has a part I enjoy. When he dreamed of meeting his girlfriend in high school and told us how they stay together. It is the only romance element and the plot attracts me a little. For instance, Bill and his girlfriend keep warm in winter; they made a date and it interrupt by some naughty boys. Finally their date was destroyed and they sat in an embarrass atmosphere.
Overall, I do not really like this book because it does not give me any ideas that make me feel terror. And I am very disappoint because the librarian introduced Man of Bone is a horrible one. However, I did not found any details frightening. I saw there is another sequel about this book, but I promise I will not keep reading.

[Eric · Rating 1 out of 5]

For my novel, Man of Bone, I found no pleasurable or interesting elements. The only part I enjoyed, or enjoyed the most, was the flashback that showed the readers how the protagonist met his wife. That part, I enjoyed because it felt like a whole different genre, perhaps romance. Other than that, I didn’t enjoy the book at all. When I was reading this, I felt very confused. The novel brings its readers back and forth through time without warning. The story started off when the protagonist woke up and found himself strapped in a room. The novel didn’t tell us how he got there until nearly the end. The flashbacks that this novel provides, doesn’t go in order either. One flashback would be a recent memory that was not too long ago. The next would be one that happened when he was just a little boy. This goes on paragraph after paragraph, each paragraph in a different time period. When I started reading, I wondered when the chapter would end. After reading a couple of pages, I looked through the book and realized that there were no chapters. I thought the novel would make a lot more sense if it had chapters. Previous books that I have read used chapter names to tell its readers more about what will happen.
The protagonist in this book also had several hallucinations. I found that I had trouble realizing what was actually happening in the book, and what was not. The protagonist’s dreams and hallucinations mixed in with his current situation, so I had no idea what was happening. He would be in the torture chamber one moment, then wake up in bed and get up for work the next. I also thought that the way the novel was ended, was pretty bad. The novel doesn’t explain how he got out, other than he was rescued. The last page ended with him in the hospital because of an incident that he caused himself, he was cutting his wrists. I think the novel should have focused more on the details about his captors and what happened to them. The novel pretty much ignored those characters after the protagonist was out of the situation. Even though this novel has a sequel, I will not be reading it.

[Dawn Stowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cumyn presents the reader with visceral and vivid depictions of torture and it psychological effect more so than the pain. It was a good thing that Cumyn decided to have the character Burridge focus for the most part on happier times, it provided a needed counter-weight. A good argument against torture as a means of data seeking told without overly gruesome but memorable detail and without presenting any overt social message. Well delivered. 3.25