The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding
237 pages
Published 2007
Read February 2
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
I
picked this one up on the basis of its title and its clean, evocative
cover. I didn't bother to read the jacket leaf summary or anything.
Sometimes that's a terrific method of finding unexpected treasures,
other times it leads to reading a few paragraphs before discarding the
book into the return pile. This time the result was pretty good but not
great, a slim, brisk book about a voluntary Arctic castaway in the early
1600s. It tells a small, briefly moving story of human loss and coping,
and babbles on a bit too long (despite its brevity) to wrap things up
in a seemingly unnecessary coda -- altogether a middling work of
moderate talent, a pleasant but forgettable literary trifle.
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