A Kayak Full of Ghosts: Eskimo Tales, gathered and retold by Lawrence Millman
191 pages
Published 1987
Read January 14
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
I
love folklore and fairy tales, but I never read enough of them. During
the course of this reading project, I expect to visit just about every
book in my library's folklore section. I picked this one first because
it was small and the stories brief; I'm reading four other books at the
moment, two or three of them fairly dense, and a brief interlude of grim
whimsy (grimsy?) is just the restorative I need. If anything, the tales
here are just a little bit too insubstantial, the read just a bit
unsatisfying. But many of them are delightfully fucked up, and that's
all I ask.
One of my favorites was "The Birth of Fog," told by a
man named Nattiq during a seal hunt in modern Nunavut. I won't
transcribe the entire story (though it barely fills a page), so strain
your eyes to read it here: http://i.imgur.com/Go7ct.jpg
I also love this droll affair: http://i.imgur.com/U4AyM.jpg
Not
sure what else there is to say about this one. It feels like cheating
to even add it to my tally, it's such a slight volume. Half of those 191
pages are filled with no more than a paragraph or two. I finished the
whole thing in maybe an hour of reading. But it's done and it's on the
list now, damn it.
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