Kathryn Harrison: The Seal Wife

By PHILIPPA JAMIESON

American author Kathryn Harrison has received acclaim for her writing, including four novels and a memoir. Her latest novel, set in Alaska in 1915, is seen through the eyes of Bigelow, a scientist sent to Anchorage to observe and record the weather.

Harrison has written a taut study of sexual obsession. Bigelow becomes fascinated by an Aleut woman, follows her home and starts an odd relationship with her. She remains silent, which at first frustrates him, but he gradually realises that her inscrutability is part of the attraction.

When she unexpectedly disappears he seeks solace with other women in a series of unsatisfactory liaisons, still haunted by his first affair. Alaska's harsh conditions and extremes of light and dark, and the fact that men far outnumber women, serve to magnify Bigelow's fixation.

As the story progresses he works on a personal project - building a huge kite to send weather instruments high into the atmosphere - a metaphor for what is going on in his mind and in his relationships. The minutiae of technical detail bored me, although it was about the only good thing Bigelow had going in his sad life.

None of the characters are drawn with much sympathy. Bigelow comes across as self-centred, weak, indecisive, a loner. He seemed to lack a whole layer of human feeling. The story is told solely from his point of view and he makes little attempt to relate to any of the women emotionally - their silence is a mere backdrop against which his own thoughts and words reverberate.

He watches the Aleut woman, whose name he never learns, with binoculars to find out her daily routines, enters her house while she is out, leaves little presents - in other words, stalks her. She merely tolerates him, which only seems to excite him more - he's always trying to possess the unattainable, unknowable, exotic other.

Why do people want what they can't get? Yes, The Seal Wife offers food for thought, but it's an emotionally parched read.

Harrison is technically a good writer, and has a consummate skill with language, although the use of the present tense throughout was exhausting. Ultimately I found little to enjoy about this bleak novel.

* Fourth Estate, $31.95

* Philippa Jamieson is a Dunedin freelance writer.