In fact, the uncanniest things a reader will find in Obreht’s vision of the Arizona frontier aren’t the ghosts, though there are plenty of them-the urgent soul of a dead child or the mutating spirits felt by a clairvoyant. It sounds a bit like the set-up for a horror movie, but the beginning of Nora’s solitude is blanketed with a sense of safety. Patriarch Emmett Lark leaves his family to find more, and his wife, Nora, is alone for days with their children, a cousin, and the ghost of her daughter to whom she speaks for solace and practical advice. After a long drought, the Larks, a homesteading family in the fictional 1893 town of Amargo in the Arizona desert, are down to the last of their water, a dangerous fate in the days before air conditioning made the territory more hospitable. In Téa Obreht’s new novel, Inland, the most fearsome villain is also the most inescapable: the weather.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2023
Categories |