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From the author of the bestselling THE BINDING CHAIR comes an extraordinary tale of desire set in the snowfields of 1917 Alaska.Bigelow is a scientist, meticulous and obsessive, a man of tightly coiled passion. Stationed in the tiny frontier town of Anchorage, Alaska in 1915, he builds a weather observatory, a kite big enough to penetrate the heavens, carrying instruments to track the great storms that scour the land. He is distracted from his labours when he meets a native Aleut woman, a stitcher of furs, whose muteness calls up in him an almost unbearable longing. Her ferocious self-containment begins to seem to him more and more animal - and yet the more her silence pushes him away he burns to possess her. And when she disappears, he begins to believe he'll die if he never sees her again...An incendiary tale set against the sear and haunting landscape of the Great North, THE SEAL WIFE merges the enchantment of myth with a taut and chilling story of erotic compulsion.
A meticulous scientist stationed in the Alaskan wilderness finds his rigid life unraveling when he becomes obsessed with a mysterious, mute Aleut woman. Bigelow, a man defined by his scientific precision and internal restraint, arrives in 1915 Anchorage to construct a weather observatory. His focus shifts from meteorological data to a local fur-stitcher whose silence and self-containment provoke an intense, consuming desire. As the harsh, isolating landscape of the Great North mirrors his growing psychological instability, Bigelow struggles to reconcile his rational worldview with the inexplicable pull of a woman who seems to embody the mythic qualities of the region. The narrative tracks his descent into obsession, culminating in a desperate search when she vanishes, leaving him to confront the limits of his own understanding.
This work is characterized by its focus on the tension between clinical observation and the irrationality of human desire. The narrative structure suggests a deliberate, slow-burn approach that emphasizes the isolation of the Alaskan setting. Readers likely encounter a prose style that is both precise and evocative, mirroring the protagonist's own scientific background. The thematic threads point to a deep interest in how mythic archetypes can manifest within a grounded, historical reality. The book invites an analytical reading of how obsession can distort one's perception of both the environment and the people within it.
Page Count:
240
Publication Date:
2009-09-25
Publisher:
HarperCollins Publishers Limited
ISBN-10:
0007336950
ISBN-13:
9780007336951
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