Kevin Patterson (1)

There is a spectacular sense of place in Consumption by Kevin Patterson, a Canadian author. One of the tags on the book says 'Alaska', but that's incorrect. The setting is Rankin Inlet in Nunavut, Canada. Patterson’s characters are very well done, flawed but true to their character. When a nickel mine opened in the late 1950s, Inuits came off the tundra for steady jobs. In their newly close confines, tuberculosis spread. This story is about the changes which came to the native population show more with the leaving of their old ways.

The three Parts of the story are prefaced with Eskimo poetry, recorded and translated in the early 1920s. The book is also punctuated with medical notes, written by the fictitious doctor in the story. I found these fascinating, both in their application to all bodies, but specifically to the rounding out of the story of these particular Inuit – T.B., diabetes, eyes.

But it is the author’s descriptions of the place and people, how they lived, that brought Rankin Inlet to life in my eyes.

”They had fed earlier in the day, diving hundreds of feet and more to the bottom of Hudson Bay, there to swallow great gulps of mud for the shellfish within, like mining pistachio ice cream for the nuts. The mussels sat in their bellies now, holding their shells as tight as they could, but weakening from the stomach acid and the enzymes. All the walruses had to do was wait for the mussels to exhaust themselves and release their grip. When hunters killed a walrus, the first thing they like to do was slit open the stomach and dig out the opened mussels and swallow them, still warm and bloody and steaming. This is called qalluk and is considered one of the best things there is to eat in the Arctic.”

Not preachy, but a story very well told. 3.6 stars show less

In almost whiplash fashion, Canada’s Inuit people were yanked from the traditional lifestyle they had lived for centuries into what should have been for them an easier life in the small Artic communities they had only visited in the past. In a scant three generations (Patterson’s book covers the 1950s to the 1990s), these people went from living “on the land” to watching their young people leave the Artic entirely in order to seek a lifestyle scarcely heard of by their grandparents. show more That such a rapid change was almost certain to be a destructive one does not lessen the impact of Patterson’s story of the Inuit as they move from a difficult, but successful, lifestyle to one of poverty and confusion, and on to a generation of children with material and cultural desires that can no longer be satisfied in the Artic.

Patterson tells the Inuit story largely through the eyes of Victoria Robinson, an Inuit woman who, when she developed tuberculosis at ten years of age, was taken from her parents and sent to Montreal for treatment. By the time that she was returned to her parents as a teenager, they were no longer living “on the land” and had moved to the small Artic town of Rankin Inlet. Victoria, now an educated young woman with some knowledge of the world, felt like an outsider when she was reunited with her family. She knew that she was different, and so did they. Her marriage to a Kablunauk, a white man, seemed inevitable to her parents, and the experiences of her bi-racial children reflect all of the pressures and desires confronted by young people who must abandon their own culture in order to have better lives than the one experienced by their grandparents and parents.

Consumption is a complex, multi-generational family saga filled with numerous characters, each of which contributes to fleshing out the world that Kevin Patterson has created. Patterson does not limit himself to a single point of view, including among his characters several Kablunauk who have come to the Rankin Inlet settlement for reasons of their own, some looking for adventure, some hoping to profit financially from what they find there, and others determined to accomplish some good by working to make the lives of the locals better.

Interspersed among the book’s chapters are short medical science essays attributed to Keith Balthazar, the town doctor who splits his time between Rankin Inlet and his apartment in New York. Readers might be tempted to skim, or even to skip, these essays but, by doing so, would miss many details and subtleties associated with the overall story. Like each of Patterson’s characters, the essays add bits and pieces of detail that help make Consumption into the moving novel that it is. It is near impossible for most readers to imagine the loneliness and isolation of the 1960s Artic settlements. Patterson not only makes it possible for us to imagine it, he achieves it in the most effective manner there is, by adding layer upon layer of detail and emotion until the reader comes to feel completely comfortable with the environment described and the people who live in it.

This is a remarkable first novel.

Rated at: 5.0 show less

This is the story of Victoria, an Inuit woman living in Rankin Inlet, in Canada's north. At the age of ten, Victoria is sent to Manitoba to cure her tuberculosis, where she spends six years. She returns home to find that her family has moved off the land and are settled in a village, and that they and she have both changed so much that reintegration becomes a challenge.

There are many classic Canadian themes in this novel -- the land, the northern frontier. The town has a mix of Inuit show more citizens and southerners (doctors, priests, teachers, mining companies) who are searching for something -- or running from something.

It's a wonderful, intriguing story and all the characters -- Dr. Balthazar, who is estranged from his family and drawn to Victoria's; Father Bernard who loves jazz music and Victoria; Victoria's husband Robertson who becomes involved in bringing a diamond mine to the community and her lover, Simionie, who fights against the mine. Victoria's children also struggle with the new ways vs. tradition, with her son Pauloosie clinging to traditonal lifestyles and her daughters yearning for more MTV.

The author, who has spent time working in the North as a doctor, contrasts these stories with those of southerners -- Dr. Balthazar's niece who is seeking something in the same way as Victoria's daughters; two teachers from the south who have very different reasons for moving North. This adds to the richness of the story.

From earlier reviews, it seems that there are chapters of Dr. Balthazar's journal spread throughout the novel. These are now printed together at the end of the book. This didn't work for me -- the story ended and there were several more pages that didn't add to it. Had they been interspersed, they may have provided a greater insight into Dr. Balthazar's impressions -- at least they wouldn't have detracted from savouring the final chapter of the story itself. show less

I find it difficult to write about Consumption. To write about the book easily requires that the book left an impression - whether good or bad - and this one just fell a bit flat.

Of course, there are interesting aspects of life in the Canadian Arctic that come to light in the book.
Of course, there are stylistic elements that Patterson uses - like the symbolism of consumption in its various meanings - throughout the novel to create the feeling of loss that permeates the novel, in which ideas, show more history, tradition and people are consumed by the spread of "civilisation".

The trouble is, that the book tried to focus on the lives of too many characters to really portray the specific community that is erased by the advance of modern life. The murder mystery that is added in the second half only adds to distract from the point of the novel. show less