Archipelago
Monique Roffey
Archipelago
When a flood destroys Gavin Weald's home, tearing apart his family and his way of life, he doesn't know how to continue. A year later, he returns to his rebuilt home and tries to start again, but when the new rainy season arrives, so do his daughter's nightmares about the torrents, and life there becomes unbearable. So father and daughter - and their dog - embark upon a voyage to make peace with the waters. Their journey will take them far from their Caribbean island home, into other unknown harbours and eventually across a massive ocean. They will sail through archipelagos, encounter the grandeur of the sea, meet with the challenges and surprises of the natural world. A miraculous future lies ahead of them, unknown territories await to be discovered. But it will take more than an ocean to put the memory of the flood behind them...
3.6 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Pages |
368 |
| RRP |
|
| Date of Publication |
July 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-1849838757 |
| Publisher |
Simon & Schuster |
| |
When a flood destroys Gavin Weald's home, tearing apart his family and his way of life, he doesn't know how to continue. A year later, he returns to his rebuilt home and tries to start again, but when the new rainy season arrives, so do his daughter's nightmares about the torrents, and life there becomes unbearable. So father and daughter - and their dog - embark upon a voyage to make peace with the waters. Their journey will take them far from their Caribbean island home, into other unknown harbours and eventually across a massive ocean. They will sail through archipelagos, encounter the grandeur of the sea, meet with the challenges and surprises of the natural world. A miraculous future lies ahead of them, unknown territories await to be discovered. But it will take more than an ocean to put the memory of the flood behind them...
With the Kisses of His Mouth by Monique Roffey.
Reviews
The Guardian
Kapka Kassabova
“Roffey excels equally at the hands-on descriptions of yachting, the intricacies of island navigation, the beauty and terror of the sea, and the inner life of her rudderless protagonist. The girl is captured with pitch-perfect empathy: "She is quietly working out how many different types of loss might exist. Many, my little mermaid. Many." The monotony of their journey is never monotonous ...”
27/07/2012
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The Independent
Anita Sethi
“Roffey here creates an incrementally powerful reflection on grief, an acute study of a father-daughter relationship, with a compelling account of climate change and a transformative journey. Putting experience through a sieve, the novel shows what remains in the heart when we have lost what we love, and the inner resources needed to rebuild a life from its ruins.”
21/07/2012
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The Financial Times
Maria Crawford
“Archipelago takes its time to explore its protagonists’ inner landscapes and to reveal the details of what happened back in Trinidad. Roffey’s evocations of everything from childhood confusion to a “carnival of stinks” in the unaired berth are strikingly vivid – yet there is also a magic in her realism. Natural phenomena have an otherworldly quality; there is a ghost of a lone mariner; and a bohemian sailor seems less a character than a portent of Océan’s future.”
17/08/2012
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The Times
Kate Saunders
“... a dangerous, beautiful journey through the Caribbean — evoked by Roffey in a prose-feast of flying fish and turquoise water — and a moving journey as Gavin regains his life.”
18/08/2012
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The Observer
Natasha Tripney
“The writing is studded with striking images – the dog's nose is as pink as a scrap of ballet shoe – and there's a real sense of momentum, of Gavin's deep need to keep going. Roffey is adept at conveying wonder, of the father and daughter both, at the things they encounter along the way, and if the final wrapping up is a little too neat, the journey is what counts here, the journey is all.”
01/07/2012
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The Sunday Times
Francesca Angelini
“Roffey traces their meditative journey from Trinidad, heading to the Galapagos, with deceptively simple prose that tenderly brings to life the wondrous creatures and landscapes they encounter. But the real strength of the novel lies in her quiet exploration of both a child and an adult’s attempts to comprehend the loss and catastrophe that nature can impose.”
05/08/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Holly Williams
“Basically, Archipelago is satisfying as an emotional and literal journey-by-numbers narrative. Roffey's prose is simple, clear, colloquial. At its best, this is engagingly frank, but at worst, it's lazy. Some phrases feel hackneyed ("How he loved the sea as a younger man; the sea was his first mistress."), while you wonder how others got past an editor: "All around them is glittering sea, and crazy speeding fish and the sun like a golden planet". Really?”
12/08/2012
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