Noah is the result of a brief liaison with a sailor, Jonas Doucet, who then continued his travels, ending up - as far as Noah knows - in the remote village of Nikolski in the Aleutian Islands. Joyce, meanwhile, is raised by her widowed father in a rural Quebecois village. Always the odd one out, Joyce listens raptly to her grandfather's stories of pirates in their family tree, including the seafaring life of her uncle, Jonas Doucet. Then she unexpectedly finds out that her mother isn't in fact dead, but took off one morning, just like a pirate, never to be seen again. Joyce decides to disappear, too, packing up her belongings and hitchhiking to Montreal.
She finds a job after a chance meeting with the gregarious Maelo, who also, separately, finds a flat for Noah, who's come to Montreal for university. Though Noah and Joyce are both friends with Maelo, the years pass without them meeting. Nor do either of them really meet the third hero, an unnamed narrator who works at a second-hand bookstore in Montreal. He wears a compass around his neck sent to him as a keepsake by his father, none other than Jonas Doucet. The compass refuses to point north, though, keeping its level aimed at Nikolski, Alaska, last known resting place of Jonas. Nikolski never settles into a predictable groove, eventually encompassing Venezuela, a criminal career for Joyce, a professor of trash and quite a lot of fish, among much else.
Meetings between the three unknowing relatives do eventually occur, but they're determinedly free of epiphanies. Noah, who was taught to read using road maps during a life of nomadic travels with his mother — their home being a Bonneville station wagon with a silver trailer — decides to leave the prairies for university in Montreal. But putting down roots there turns out to be a more transitory experience than he expected. There he finds his true home among books, content to spend his days working in a used bookstore and journeying though the many worlds books open up for him.
Their journeys seem remarkably unformed, more often guided by the prevailing winds than personal will, yet their stories weave in and out of other wondrous tales — stories about such things as fearsome female pirates, urban archaeologists, unexpected floods, fish of all kinds, a mysterious book without a cover and a dysfunctional compass whose needle obstinately points to the remote Aleutian village of Nikolski. Read more Read less. What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?
Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Customers who viewed this item also viewed. The Lonely Hearts Hotel: Knopf Canada; 1st edition March 4, Language: Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video.
Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review.
tandjfoods.com: Nikolski (): Nicolas Dickner, Lazer Lederhendler: Books
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. It got boring and couldn't figure out the real plot. One person found this helpful. The story is to some extent in the range of exageration but in total the characters are reality. I could enter and understand the motivation. Some books make you feel; other books make you think. Nicolas Dickner's clever debut, Nikolski, definitely falls largely into the latter category.
As a matter of fact, it still has me turning over its intricacies in my head months after I've finished it. This tightly woven tale is packed with ideas that challenge the customary thinking about the nature of personal identity.
See a Problem?
Dickner asks if who we are is a result of nature or nurture, genealogy or geography, or, perhaps, a combination of all four. Early in the story, we are introduced to the three main characters, all distantly related, although not necessarily aware of one another's existence. They are the unnamed narrator - a second hand bookshop clerk who is in possession of a compass that always points in the direction of Nikolski, a tiny Aleutian Island, Noah - son of an itinerant Native American mother and absentee father, who learned to read from roadmaps and Joyce - a restless young woman descended from a family of French-Canadian pirates.
The three stories unfold in alternating chapters as each begins a pilgrimage to unearth their family connections, seek their place in the world, establish their destinies and find themselves. Like the Nikolski compass, the writer postulates that all people have a built-in homing instinct. A family of Dominican fishmongers who rent a room to Noah and employ Joyce in their retail shop , despite being long time residents of Canada, hold a monthly "jututo" to enjoy their native foods and boisterously debate Dominican politics.
And humorously, we see how Joyce and her erstwhile mother inadvertently fall into a twentieth century version of the family business - as computer pirates. Ties to place, ethnicity and family not only dictate our actions, but define who we are. This was a deceptively easy and enjoyable read.
There was a certain sense of mystery, plus a fair bit of suspense, that pulled me along until the end. It's particularly impressive to see how the author weaves all the threads together. Much like the "three-headed book" that passes through the hands of both Noah and Joyce, before ending up on the bookstore's shelves, Dickner manages to stitch three disparate stories into one cohesive, and endlessly captivating, whole.
Definitely one of a kind.
Pirates of Quebec
This book is about three lonely, lost souls trying to find their place in the world. Noah, Joyce and an unnamed bookstore owner are all misfits who are connected in ways they do not realize and whose lives have a lot of parallels to each other, even if they are not conscious of each other. All three of them were raised by a single parent and they all have, for one reason or another, distanced themselves from their families and are making their way in the world alone. They all are searching for meaning in their lives and, in that vein, all have a fascination with their roots and ancestry.
They all have a fascination with trash or discarded objects in one way or another. The bookstore owner sells used books, even ones that others have thrown away, Noah majors in archaeology with a fascination for the archeaology of trash, and Joyce becomes a trash-diving treasure hunter as part of her quest to become an cyber-pirate.
The three story lines, although they intersect only tangentially, flow beautifully and the language is very lyrical which is very interesting given that this book was translated from French and translations usually are a bit stilted. Of the three, my favorite character was Noah.
- Gabriel Conroy de M. Bret Harte (French Edition).
- Zulu Victor Bravo?
- Nikolski, Alaska.
- Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner.
- Native Village of Nikolski!
- Dedicato a... toccata e fuga (Italian Edition).
- Nikolski (novel);
He is so sweet and earnest and was a bit more focused and in control of his destiny than the other two. Although I adore books, bookstores and used bookstores in particular, I found it a little hard to relate to the bookstore owner because he is never identified by name and the author perhaps deliberately keeps the reader more distant from him. Joyce is a very interesting character but not quite as empathetic as Noah.
Overall, this was an excellent first novel by Nicholas Dickner. He has a real flair for character development and for seamlessly incorporating quirky traits and elements into the story the archaeology of trash being only one example.