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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Paulsen, Gary

Northwind

256 pp. | Farrar | January, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-0-374-31420-0 $17.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-0-374-31421-7 $10.99
(2) 4-6 "Nobody knew exactly when the dark ship came and to be sure at first they could not see it at all but only understood it was there in the thick fog by the smell. There was a drifting stink of death." So begins Paulsen's posthumously published novel--quintessentially Paulsen in many respects. The cadence of the prose is often mesmerizing as long, meandering sentences cascade into short, clipped ones, and vice versa. The plot is classic Paulsen: a young boy masters his fate by mastering the elements. (This author's mark on the wilderness survival genre is so indelible that Hatchet feels like the archetype.) Here the young boy is Leif, who, after his Norse fishing village is devastated by a plague-like sickness, finds himself in a cedar canoe heading north along the rocky coastline. One final hallmark of a Paulsen book is its ring of authenticity, that sense that the author is writing from a position of knowledge, experience, and authority. He established that credibility in his earlier memoirs, Caught by the Sea: My Life on Boats and Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood (rev. 3/21), and it shows on almost every page of this novel, too. The melancholic, elegiac nature of the book, coupled with the way it distills Paulsen's tremendous strengths into a single novel, makes it a fitting swan song.
Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt

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