A wonderful sympathy …

… The Art of the Novella challenge 36: The Country of Pointed Firs — MobyLives. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Much of the book’s charm comes from those personal encounters which make up many of the short chapters, the phrases the characters come out with, and the stories they tell – and here again my ignorance or, to use an appropriately maritime metaphor, my lack of bearings, felt like the best possible armament. One of the first locals who rocks up to the author’s scholarly bolt hole to distract her is Captain Littlepage,  a “thin, bending figure” she describes as being like “an aged grasshopper of some strange human variety”. He tells the author about his seafaring days, and embarks on a frankly bizarre anecdote about a land discovered up beyond the north pole that… well, I won’t spoil the story, but I will say that, as I was reading it, I was thinking: this is where the story is going; either what has happened thus far has been a frame for this fantastical excursion, or else the narrator is going to up sticks and set sail to find it herself.