Tag Archives: book review

“[Giller] judges said the novel “charts the painful search by a dutiful daughter to learn – and more importantly to learn to understand – the multi-layered truth which lies at the moral core of her dying father’s life”.” wrote The Guardian newspaper. “They described the writing as “trip-wire taut” in its exploration of guilt, family and duty.” The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud was the winner of the 2010 Giller Prize for fiction. Johanna Skibsrud’s debut novel connects the flooding of an Ontario town, the Vietnam War, a trailer in North Dakota and an unfinished boat in Maine. Parsing family history, worn childhood memories, and the palimpsest of old misunderstandings, Skibsrud’s narrator maps her father’s past. Napoleon Haskell lives with Henry in the town of Casablanca, Ontario, on the shores of a man-made lake beneath which lie the remains of the former town. Henry is the father of Napoleon’s friend Owen, who died fighting in Vietnam. When her life comes apart, Napoleon’s daughter retreats to Casablanca and is soon immersed in the complicated family stories that lurk below the surface of everyday life. With its quiet mullings and lines from Bogart, The Sentimentalists captures a daughter’s wrestling with a heady family mythology. From the publisher, Gaspereau Press The story of The Sentimentalists‘ rise to fame is incredible, and part of the reason I wanted to like the novel. It was released by a small regional publisher who hand-prints all their books. The initial print run for Skibsrud’s novel was a mere 800 [...]