Consumption A novel Author:Kevin Patterson Born on the tundra in the 1950s, Victoria knows nothing but the nomadic hunting life of the Inuit until, at the age of ten, she is diagnosed with tuberculosis and evacuated to a southern sanitarium. During her six-year stay, she learns Cree and English and becomes accustomed to books and radio, sunbathing and store-bought food. When she returns ... more »home at sixteen, she finds a radically changed world. Even her father, Emo, a legendary hunter, has come in off the land to work in a mine in Rankin Inlet on the edge of Hudson Bay. And Victoria has herself become a stranger to her family and her culture.
Vividly evoking the modern contradictions of the Arctic—walrus meat and convenience food, midnight sun and 24-hour satellite TV, dog teams and diamond mines—CONSUMPTION takes us into the heart of Victoria's internal exile. Many love her, but none can heal her. Not her husband, Robertson, who slowly becomes estranged from her as he pursues the economic opportunities the north offers white men. Not her Inuit lover, who can only comfort her with glimpses of her lost childhood. And especially not the local doctor, Keith Balthazar, who has come to Rankin Inlet from New York to escape scrutiny.
A penetrating portrait of generational divisions and cultural dissonance, CONSUMPTIONilluminates how the tenuous bonds of friendship, love, and family fly apart—and the unexpectedly tender ways in which survivors carry on.« less