A tired genre, perhaps, but the writing makes it worth reading
F I C T I O N
Afterlands By Steven Heighton
Knopf Canada
416 pp., $32.95
Let’s get the
genre question
out of the way.
Yes, this is (sigh)
yet another
meticulously researched historical novel from a Canadian writer. The fictional part of the story emerges from the rifts in the known past, the author riffing off the historical record and the biographies of real people. The curious obsession of Canadian writers with the genre — call it interstitial historical fiction — has generated a great deal of comment over the years. Most of it is enthusiastic, though some people (notably novelist Russell Smith) have taken to complaining that this fixation on the past is starving the present of literary oxygen.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a national literature coalescing around a genre or narrative style — you don’t see a lot of people complaining about yet another work of magic realism from South America, for example. I think there are only two important questions here. First, is the history fetish preventing the country’s leading novelists from dealing with important aspects of contemporary Canadian life? Second, is the reliance on historical events serving as a crutch, a substitute for observation, imagination and creativity?
I think the answer to the first question is clearly yes, though it is hard to fault writers and publishers for churning out product that the reading public clearly adores. The second question depends on the particular writer, but in the case of Steven Heighton’s new novel, Afterlands, the answer is yes, and no. On the one hand, this book draws deep from the well of stock elements: We encounter adventurous Americans, stateless immigrant Europeans, noble and stoically suffering natives, disappearing traditions, tragic love, all backlit by the perpetual struggle against unyielding land and impossible climate. Still, the story is in the telling, and Afterlands is up there with the best work in the genre.
To the story, then. The meat of the narrative is the 1871- 72 U. S. Navy expedition to the North Pole. The USS Polaris was commanded by Charles Francis Hall, and had a crew of 25. In October, 1872, the ship got into trouble off the coast of Ellesmere Island, and in the confusion 19 people were marooned on the ice. These included Lieutenant George Tyson, second mate Roland Kruger and two Inuit families. For six months the castaways drifted south through the Arctic winter, down the Davis Strait, meeting the predictable slate of challenges: polar bears, starvation, mutiny, madness, cannibalism. In Heighton’s hands, this is gripping stuff. Even though we know from the setup that all are rescued, he keeps the tension high as the veneer of civilization erodes, just as the ice floe is steadily eroding beneath their feet.
As the de jure commander of the floe, Tyson has to deal with rebellion by the enlisted men, while Kruger struggles with the conflict between loyalty to the expedition and to his fellow German crewmates. Meanwhile, both Tyson and Kruger have fallen in love with the Eskimo woman, Tukilito, who is herself caught between conflicting loves, loyalties and cultures.
The last third of the book mostly follows Kruger’s post-rescue life. After Tyson writes a popular account of their adventure in which Kruger is portrayed as a troublemaker and possible mutineer, the German flees south to Mexico. He briefly hooks up with a Sina Indian prostitute, then finds a wife and has a family. He loses his family and is conscripted into the Mexican army, where he participates in the 19th-century equivalent of ethnic cleansing. The entire time, he carries a torch for his unrequited love, Tukilito.
In an author’s note at the end of the book, Heighton notes that while the ice-floe section of the story is made up of improvisations on Tyson’s actual account, Kruger’s Mexican afterstory is entirely imagined. The connection between these two major sections is quite tenuous, to the point that they seem to be almost separate books. The chief source of difficulty is that the connecting thread — Kruger’s feelings for Tukilito — is never adequately set up on the ice floe, and the nature of their mutual attraction is a total mystery throughout the book. This is unfortunate, because that relationship is in many ways the fulcrum that moves the whole plot along.
The reason to read this book is for the quality of the writing, as Heighton is a superb stylist. He does allow himself the occasional jarring poetic excursion ( a rising sun is described as “persimmons and peaches shading into clover-honey, yolk- yellow, buttermilk-yellow”) but for the most part he is in complete control of the language. If you’re a fan of the genre, by all means pick up Afterlands.
Andrew Potter lives in Montreal. He is co-author of The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t be Jammed.