A quite bizarre and wonderful book. The first section has an independent woman managing to support her family in the early 20th century by writing pulp fiction. It shifts into something of a mystery, with her searching for a lost child, and then becomes a meditation on consciousness and the legend of Sasquatch. Gloss is such an amazing writer. I've loved every one of her books, and they're quite different from each other. ( )

This was a very strange book, but very good. Part of what it does, quite deliberately I believe, is change course several times. I knew about the fantastic element in the book before buying it -- that, along with having read some of Molly's other gorgeous writing, pretty much sold it to me -- but I think the publisher would have served the book better by giving it a cover that didn't code it so unambiguously as Western historical fiction. Its ambiguities are part of its loveliness, and should be celebrated instead of simplified away.

The story is told largely in diary entries, though with interpolated articles and pieces of the Charlotte's published fiction. In the early sections, before the plot ramps up, it's her voice that carries us along -- plucky and stubborn but also aware of her own failings and occasional ridiculousness. To a writer, female or not, her notes on and soul-searching about finding time for writing and negotiating your own literary ambitions will resonate.

Once Charlotte leaves on her quest -- to help find a lost child, which isn't a spoiler since it's mentioned on the first page's 'cover letter' -- some of the themes, like modernity and mechanization, start to come to the forefront. The landscape and equipment of 1900s logging in the Northwest United States is very interesting, and unfamiliar to most of us. Charlotte's self-conscious modernity and discomfort with primordial wildness becomes easy to understand when we see the vast taming action being carried out against the land.

As for the latter half, I'm unwilling to affect others' reading of it by going into much detail, but I will say that it follows a structure -- the deliberately paced, background-building plot that culminates in a transformative, lyrical journey -- that I enjoyed in Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, and it's equally hard-hitting and effective here. The climactic and concluding sections of the book kept me pressed to the page, wiping away tears. I felt my skin prickle with the sense of visiting, or being visited by, another world lost in and for our own. ( )

I loved this historical novel about a woman raising her family alone in the west. The slipstream-iness is what takes it beyond a 'feisty independent' heroine story, into deeper territory exploring responsibility and wildness.

If you liked the slipstream historical aspect try Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler and God's Fires by Patricia Anthony (although the latter is rather darker). ( )

I thought this was fantastic. Thoroughly engaging story, wonderful strong female protagonist, good writing.

The story is told via fictional journal entries, snippets of a novel in progress, magazine articles and essays written by the protagonist Charlotte, a very strong, independent woman living in Southwest Washington in the early 1900s. She embarks on an amazing journey into the forest to search for a lost child. Imaginative and compelling. Part of the charm of this book for me is the location - my home ground of the Pacific Northwest, the forests and rivers and mountains. Gloss includes some fascinating history about the area and about logging, which was already beginning to have extreme adverse effects over 100 years ago. ( )

Need to read--review pending