I hadn’t read anything by James A. Michener for 30 years. As a kid, I had read The Drifters and Hawaii. I don’t remember if I read them because my father said I should try them, or because he had read them and they were simply available on his extensive bookshelves.
This summer, I read Journey, having found it in a giveaway box while waiting for an island ferry on the Nisqually Reach in Washington State. It’s not a summer book, but the location – almost Canada – seemed to fit. The subjects of Journey are freezing cold and arrogance: Five British men try to reach the Klondike gold fields from Edmonton in Alberta, travelling down freezing rivers, crossing Arctic mountains and spending deadly winters in the extreme North of Canada.
It’s not a bad book. At 220 pages, it’s one of Michener’s shorter novels. Michener is famous for painting plausible pictures of places and times he can’t possibly have experienced himself. He almost, but not entirely, escapes the uncanny valley: Occasionally his characters say things or act in ways that seem unlikely. This is definitely the case for Journey, and if my memory serves me right, it was also the case for The Drifters.
Nehaveigur 