Very Well Read

Not really sure what to say about this book. It's a book that I'd heard was good from a few people, so I thought I'd give it a try. But my basic summary of the book was really encapsulated by the following email that I sent to one of the people who said the book was good (note: spoilers ahead!):

Since you seemed enjoy Not Wanted on the Voyage (at least based on your comment on my blog), I was hoping you could tell me wtf I was supposed to get out of it. I mean, it was entertaining and I especially liked the cat, but wtf? Noah was a terrible person and we have no unicorns because he used the unicorn to rape his 12-year-old daughter-in-law? Noah's wife (who, as far as I can tell didn't have a first name), was an alcoholic, but she liked sheep?

I'll update this posting if I get an answer explaining whatever it is that missing about this book.

As for quotations, there was really only one thing in the whole book that stood out to me - a description of the ark:

• "...its colour was a horror, made worse by the great running streams of pitch, oozing down its sides like so much inedible frsotings on a poison cake" (p. 120)

I even tried Googling "Not Wanted on The Voyage" to see if anyone had explained what the point was, but came up with nothing. No one seemed better able to describe the point, although there was a lot of "it's magical" and suchlike.

Oh ya, did I mention that I liked the cat?

Findley, Timothy. Not Wanted on the Voyage. Toronto: Penguin, 1996.

Labels: fiction "Canadian literature"