I came to Lowry’s fiction sort of accidentally. I knew of him, of course, and of his most famous novel, Under the Volcano; but I’d never read him, nor had any real desire to do so. But after my father died, my mother was clearing out some stuff, including a collection of Penguin paperbacks my dad had bought in the late 1960s (the receipts were still in the books), and which included, among many other authors, three books by Lowry. I took about two dozen of the paperbacks, including the Lowrys, and the first of the Lowrys I read was his collection, Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place. I was hugely impressed by the novella, ‘Through the Panama’. So I read the other two paperbacks, Ultramarine (see here) and Under the Volcano (see here). And then I wanted to read more… So I started collecting first editions of his books. And I have now read them all. October Ferry to Gabriola was his last, not published until thirteen years after his death. (In fact, only Ultramarine and Under the Volcano, and some of the contents of his collection, were published during his lifetime.) Ethan Llewellyn and his wife, Jacqueline, have been evicted from their shack on the Eridanus river and, after some time spent in Vancouver, have chosen to head for the small island of Gabriola to buy an advertised property. The novel opens on the bus to the seaside town where they will catch the ferry, but pretty much heads straight into flashback, beginning with their home in Niagara-on-the-lake. But their home there burns down in a freak lightning strike. Leading to their move to Eridanus. October Ferry to Gabriola is a hit of the pure Lowry – from the plot recycling parts of Lowry’s own life, never mind parts of his other works (their neighbours in Eridanus are Sigbjørn and Primrose Wilderness, Lowry analogues in Dark is the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid, ‘Through the Panama’ and a handful of stories), the long discursive sentences, the detailed self-reflective and self-analytical prose, the self-deprecating humour, and, of course, the copious amount of alcohol. This is great stuff, it’s just so good. I went slightly mad when I decided to collect Lowry, but I’ve yet to read anything by him that has caused me to question that madness. I’m only sorry I’ve run out of novels by him to read. I guess I’ll just have to start re-reading them… ( )

October Ferry to Gabriola is sort of "Malcolm Lowry's Last Novel," as it says on the cover of my copy of the first edition. It was posthumously issued, as edited by his widow Margerie from the MSS. It's hard to begrudge her hand in it, both because she assures the reader of her scrupulousness in disdaining to add any text beyond what Lowry had penned, and because the book had its origin in a short story that she had co-written with him, on the basis of their shared experience.

As with all of Lowry's novels, this one is strongly rooted in his personal experience, and the principal characters are recognizable as vehicles for the perspectives and sentiments of the author and his associates. The central figure (and Malcolm stand-in) is Ethan Llewellyn, a prematurely semi-retired defense attorney. His wife Jacqueline is based on Margerie. Jacqueline's father The McCandless is based on Charles Stansfeld Jones, who was a neighbor, friend, and magical mentor to the Lowrys in British Columbia.

Although October Ferry is a very modern, terribly interior novel, it is significantly oriented to its setting. While Lowry wrote two novels set in Mexico (Under the Volcano and Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid), this one stands alone as a Canadian story and a literary love letter to the British Columbia coast where he lived with Margerie.

Both the characters and the setting are threatened and in flux during the course of the novel, and the ferry ride of the title is a suitable figure for the themes of eviction and estrangement that serve as the foundation of the story. Ethan, like Lowry and his other central characters, struggles with drink. In the bus to the ferry, and the subsequent boat ride to the island that they hope will be their new home, Ethan reviews his life since meeting Jacqueline, and contemplates the difficulties he has had, feeling increasingly as if he is under a curse that must soon be relieved or drive him under altogether. He sees omens and portents for his own personal welfare, while the residential and industrial development around Vancouver menaces the wilderness he has come to love.

In an editorial afterword, Margerie Lowry notes that there were two elements of the book that she thought Malcolm had planned to develop further than was evident in his final drafts, although she didn't add anything on them herself. These were the character of The McCandless, a noble old Scottish occultist, and the question of the wrong turn in Ethan's legal career which left him with a burden of unresolved guilt. Both of these were touched on in the book as it stands, but I found both of them interesting and was in fact disappointed not to have had more about them, even before reading the editorial note about their underdevelopment.