Book Reviews

Crossing Borders

Steve Zipp (Author)
Yellowknife. Res Teluris
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Reviewed by Jonquil Covello

Yellowknife is Steve Zipp's first novel and he uses his experience as a former northerner to create an array of eccentric characters and track their activities through a year in Yellowknife. Government biologists called Pfang, Smolt, and Ungle work on inane wildlife projects, while bushwise northerners such as Suzi and Iggi make their living fishing on the lake and terrorizing sport fishermen. The novel, which concerns crossing borders and survival, begins with Danny, a drifter, arriving at the NWT border and finding himself in an unfamiliar world. The reader shares Danny's confusion as he struggles to cope with a car-wrecking bison, a restaurant serving scrambled caribou brains on toast, and a map with nothing on it except blank spaces and mosquito routes. Danny teams up with old timer Freddy and learns to survive by outsmarting ravens to steal dog food and bedding down at the local dump. In this north, survival is a full time job involving wits and luck.Zipp reminds us of famous figures such as John Hornby and John Franklin who also challenged the north and failed to survive because of arrogance, pride or stupidity.

Yellowknife is not exactly a history book or a guide book but it circles around these genres as it provides a startling number of obscure facts and events, and outlines solutions to problems that might confront newcomers. Who knew, for example, that the blade of a snowplow makes an excellent anchor for a houseboat, or that the best way to avoid getting wet while hunting in the rain is to take your clothes off? If there is a problem with Yellowknife, it is that there are too many confusing details and references to forgotten events such as the crash of the Russian satellite, Kosmos-954, the supposed disappearance of a caribou herd, or the unlikely discovery of diamonds, but then again it may be that the north is always a confusing and difficult place and that the authenticity of the novel resides in its very obscurity.

The novel contains tragic events, such as deaths by drowning, but somehow they are not unexpected because as Hugo, the mosquito biologist, realizes as he sinks into the cold water of Great Slave Lake, the north, and the world beyond it, is not an orderly place and cannot be relied upon. Zipp's novel is a witty and, at times, absurd satire on Yellowknife and the north, but underneath its quirkiness is a serious reminder that the wilderness is not a "summer camp" as some would believe, and those who disregard its mysteries do so at their own peril.

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This review originally appeared in Canadian Literature #200 (Spring 2009), Ray Fenwick. (pg. 200 - 200)

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