From Publishers Weekly
Obsessions are Harrison's forte (The Binding Chair, etc.) and here she plumbs the mind of a young man deprived of companions, diversions and even the basic amenities of civilization who develops a passion for a woman whose very remoteness feeds his desire. In 1915, 26-year-old Bigelow Greene is sent to establish a U.S. weather station in Anchorage, a primitive settlement where the sled dogs howl all night in the 20-hour-long winter darkness. Bigelow is asingle-minded man; he first becomes obsessed with the idea of building a huge kite to measure air temperature high in the atmosphere and thus enable long-range forecasting. But he's soon smitten with a woman the locals call the Aleut. She's mysterious, enigmatic, virtually mute sex between she and Bigelow is wordless and when he discovers that she's left Anchorage, Bigelow almost goes mad with longing. Eventually, he succumbs to the lure of another woman, Miriam Getz, the daughter of the storekeeper. She, too, is mute by choice, and she proves to be a demon, the very opposite of the self-contained Aleut. Bigelow is caught in her trap. As Harrison describes the black loneliness of winter and the mosquito-infested summer days, the mood grows darker and more suspenseful, emblematic of Bigelow's desolate psyche. In perfect control of the spare narrative, Harrison writes mesmerizing, cinematically vivid scenes: Native American laborers fascinated by Caruso recordings; the gigantic kite nearly dragging Bigelow to his death off a cliff and, later, soaring into the turbulent sky of a rousing storm. Given these ominous events, and for those who know the Celtic legend of the seal wife, the ending is all the more surprising. Author tour. (May)Forecast: Harrison's excellently assimilated research about the early days of weather forecasting and about the conditions in Alaska during WWI add credibility to a novel about the inner landscape of desire. This double appeal should spark good sales. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Sent to frigid Alaska in the early 1900s to establish a weather observatory, a man finds hot passion as well.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Harrison's strange and haunting novel, based in remote turn-of-the century Alaska, places the greatest challenges on a narrator. It offers only the slenderest of story lines, the obsessive love of a young meteorologist named Bigelow for an Aleut woman who will not speak to him, and, other than their lovemaking, hardly recognizes his presence at all. At the same time that he pursues this passion, Bigelow is preoccupied by a parallel consuming desire that tests him just as severely--to build a weather kite that will fly higher than any kite before. Fred Stella's reading, precise, earnest, and wise, makes us attend carefully to Harrison's lyrical writing and to her exploration of a man's fevered psyche. M.O. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Chimerical and probing, Harrison creates utterly different realms in each of her acute, highly stylized novels, yet all chart the course of obsessive desire. More concentrated and dreamier than its predecessors, including The Binding Chair (2000), her fifth novel takes place in 1915. Bigelow, a handsome and intrepid 26-year-old meteorologist, moves to Anchorage, Alaska, to establish a weather station. Suffering from the cold, extremes of dark and light, and cultural deprivation, he fusses diligently with his instruments, maps, and logbooks, and builds an enormous kite, which he hopes will help him prove a theory about polar air. Uncomfortable with the hardscrabble town's macho men, he falls hard for a mysterious Aleut woman who never speaks or shows any emotion, even during sex. Then she disappears. Devastated, desperately lonely, and sexually starved, Bigelow gets entangled in a bizarre situation with yet another silent woman. Harrison writes with a curiously voluptuous efficiency as she gives rein to her endearingly hapless hero's feverish mind, and explores the brutal dynamics of a frontier town where the ambitions of outsiders collide with indigenous wisdom. Painterly in its pearlescent evocation of the Alaskan landscape, steeped in myth and the magic of science, this is a delectably moody, erotic, and provocative cross-cultural love story. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
Praise for The Seal Wife

"[A] mesmerizing new novel... A simple story of love and obsession... harrowing in its emotional intensity, haunting in its evocation of a distant time and place... Harrison narrates these events with uncommon grace, limning the frozen landscape of early-20th-century Alaska with the same easy authority she brings to the delineation of Bigelow’s turbulent state of mind. She demonstrates, with more assurance…that she is capable of writing historical fiction that possesses all the immediacy and harsh poetry of reportage... [she] demonstrates her ability to evoke the sensual qualities of everyday life, while using language that is considerably sparer than she has used before but equally hypnotic... Ms. Harrison not only makes us understand the destructive consequences of sexual obsession, but also makes us appreciate its power to shape an individual’s sense of self, its ability to inspire and perhaps even to redeem the past."
-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Lyrical passage... Reads like profound poetry... Turns out to be a rather wonderful surprise, the most enterprising and successful portrait of a man in heat by a female writer since Joyce Carol Oates’ tumultuously orgasmic What I Lived For."
-Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

"[Harrison] has a real talent for conjuring far-flung times and places-a patient zeal for assembling odd, telling details that convey the look and feel of a particular era. Her novels are intricately wrought, displaying ample evidence of her subtle intellingence. The novel’s awareness of the natural world gives it a sturdier, more philosophical underpinning - Harrison imbues her solitary silence with a stately air of self-posession."
-Maria Russo, The New York Times Book Review

"This mesmerizing tale is dizzying in intensity; its startling story twists are borne along by prose as austere and powerful as Alaska’s icescape. The novel’s undertow of anguish will resonate with anyone who has tried to make sense of desire. Chilled to perfection."
-People Magazine

"A beautiful novel, elegant and brief, profoundly reverent toward the dignity of its characters and the redemptive possibilities of passion, endurance, and work."
-Vincent Passaro, O Magazine

"Prose as pristine as ice droplets."
-Entertainment Weekly

"[A] darkly passionate tale of a distant time and dramatic place."
-Glamour Magazine

"In perfect control of the spare narrative, Harrison writes memerizing, cinematically vivid scenes - Harrison’s excellently assimilated research about the early days of weather forecasting and about the conditions in Alaska during WWII add credibility to a novel about the inner landscape of desire."
-Publishers Weekly

"Painterly in its pearlescent evocation of the Alaskan landscape, steeped in myth and the magic of science, this is a delectably moody, erotic, and provative cross-cultural love story."
-Booklist

"[Harrison] will amaze readers with the ostensibly effortless manner in which she describes both the bleak terrain of Alaska and the alien terrain of Bigelow’s own compulsive thoughts. At the root of this story is the interplay between seclusion and desire. Harrison forcefully develops this primal conflict."
-Library Journal

“With prose pared down, often as cryptic as her characters, and as mesmerizing, Kathryn Harrison unrolls an unusual story of driving loneliness and penetrating passion, mapping weather and lives and desire in Alaska....A captivating read.
-Susan Vreeland


Praise for Kathryn Harrison

“Erotic, irresistible, this novel draws you hypnotically into the pain and the glorious power of being born female.”
—Maggie Scarf, about The Binding Chair

“If we can ever finally know each other, it is because we are cornered into that knowledge by our very best writers, writers like Kathryn Harrison, who are unflinching, who will not turn away from the desperate love that makes the world less safe. To say that Harrison plays with fire would be an understatement.”
—Bob Shacochis, about Thicker Than Water

“The bravery in Harrison’s raw, clear voice will stay with me a long time. I couldn’t stop reading this. I’ll never stop remembering it.”
—Mary Karr, about The Kiss

“Powerful and hypnotic.”
—Michiko Kakutani, about Exposure

“Intelligent and impassioned...superbly written...a hothouse of a novel.”
—The New York Times Book Review, about Poison


Review
Praise for The Seal Wife

"[A] mesmerizing new novel... A simple story of love and obsession... harrowing in its emotional intensity, haunting in its evocation of a distant time and place... Harrison narrates these events with uncommon grace, limning the frozen landscape of early-20th-century Alaska with the same easy authority she brings to the delineation of Bigelow?s turbulent state of mind. She demonstrates, with more assurance?that she is capable of writing historical fiction that possesses all the immediacy and harsh poetry of reportage... [she] demonstrates her ability to evoke the sensual qualities of everyday life, while using language that is considerably sparer than she has used before but equally hypnotic... Ms. Harrison not only makes us understand the destructive consequences of sexual obsession, but also makes us appreciate its power to shape an individual?s sense of self, its ability to inspire and perhaps even to redeem the past."
-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Lyrical passage... Reads like profound poetry... Turns out to be a rather wonderful surprise, the most enterprising and successful portrait of a man in heat by a female writer since Joyce Carol Oates? tumultuously orgasmic What I Lived For."
-Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

"[Harrison] has a real talent for conjuring far-flung times and places-a patient zeal for assembling odd, telling details that convey the look and feel of a particular era. Her novels are intricately wrought, displaying ample evidence of her subtle intellingence. The novel?s awareness of the natural world gives it a sturdier, more philosophical underpinning - Harrison imbues her solitary silence with a stately air of self-posession."
-Maria Russo, The New York Times Book Review

"This mesmerizing tale is dizzying in intensity; its startling story twists are borne along by prose as austere and powerful as Alaska?s icescape. The novel?s undertow of anguish will resonate with anyone who has tried to make sense of desire. Chilled to perfection."
-People Magazine

"A beautiful novel, elegant and brief, profoundly reverent toward the dignity of its characters and the redemptive possibilities of passion, endurance, and work."
-Vincent Passaro, O Magazine

"Prose as pristine as ice droplets."
-Entertainment Weekly

"[A] darkly passionate tale of a distant time and dramatic place."
-Glamour Magazine

"In perfect control of the spare narrative, Harrison writes memerizing, cinematically vivid scenes - Harrison?s excellently assimilated research about the early days of weather forecasting and about the conditions in Alaska during WWII add credibility to a novel about the inner landscape of desire."
-Publishers Weekly

"Painterly in its pearlescent evocation of the Alaskan landscape, steeped in myth and the magic of science, this is a delectably moody, erotic, and provative cross-cultural love story."
-Booklist

"[Harrison] will amaze readers with the ostensibly effortless manner in which she describes both the bleak terrain of Alaska and the alien terrain of Bigelow?s own compulsive thoughts. At the root of this story is the interplay between seclusion and desire. Harrison forcefully develops this primal conflict."
-Library Journal

?With prose pared down, often as cryptic as her characters, and as mesmerizing, Kathryn Harrison unrolls an unusual story of driving loneliness and penetrating passion, mapping weather and lives and desire in Alaska....A captivating read.
-Susan Vreeland


Praise for Kathryn Harrison

?Erotic, irresistible, this novel draws you hypnotically into the pain and the glorious power of being born female.?
?Maggie Scarf, about The Binding Chair

?If we can ever finally know each other, it is because we are cornered into that knowledge by our very best writers, writers like Kathryn Harrison, who are unflinching, who will not turn away from the desperate love that makes the world less safe. To say that Harrison plays with fire would be an understatement.?
?Bob Shacochis, about Thicker Than Water

?The bravery in Harrison?s raw, clear voice will stay with me a long time. I couldn?t stop reading this. I?ll never stop remembering it.?
?Mary Karr, about The Kiss

?Powerful and hypnotic.?
?Michiko Kakutani, about Exposure

?Intelligent and impassioned...superbly written...a hothouse of a novel.?
?The New York Times Book Review, about Poison


Book Description
Stunning, hypnotic, spare, The Seal Wife is the masterly new novel by Kathryn Harrison, “a writer of extraordinary gifts” (Tobias Wolff). Set in Alaska in 1915, it tells the story of a young scientist’s consuming love for a woman known as the Aleut, a woman who never speaks, who refuses to reveal so much as her name.

Born and educated in midwestern cities, Bigelow is sent north by the United States government to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage. But what could have prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town with more than two thousand men and only a handful of women, or for winter nights twenty hours long? And what can protect him from obsession—obsession with a woman who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and obsession with the weather kite he invents, a kite he hopes will fly higher than any has ever flown before and will penetrate the secrets of the heavens?

A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and convention. As she brilliantly reimagines the terrain of the Alaskan frontier during the period of the First World War, Harrison, a “master of her material” (Mary Gordon), also evokes early efforts to chart the weather and reveals the interior realm of the psyche and emotions—a human landscape that, in its splendor and terror, is profoundly and eerily reminiscent of the frozen frontier and the storms that scour its face.


From the Inside Flap
Stunning, hypnotic, spare, The Seal Wife is the masterly new novel by Kathryn Harrison, “a writer of extraordinary gifts” (Tobias Wolff). Set in Alaska in 1915, it tells the story of a young scientist’s consuming love for a woman known as the Aleut, a woman who never speaks, who refuses to reveal so much as her name.

Born and educated in midwestern cities, Bigelow is sent north by the United States government to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage. But what could have prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town with more than two thousand men and only a handful of women, or for winter nights twenty hours long? And what can protect him from obsession—obsession with a woman who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and obsession with the weather kite he invents, a kite he hopes will fly higher than any has ever flown before and will penetrate the secrets of the heavens?

A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and convention. As she brilliantly reimagines the terrain of the Alaskan frontier during the period of the First World War, Harrison, a “master of her material” (Mary Gordon), also evokes early efforts to chart the weather and reveals the interior realm of the psyche and emotions—a human landscape that, in its splendor and terror, is profoundly and eerily reminiscent of the frozen frontier and the storms that scour its face.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Set in Alaska in 1915, it tells the story of a young scientist's consuming love for a woman known as the Aleut, a woman who never speaks, who refuses to reveal so much as her name." Born and educated in midwestern cities, Bigelow is sent north by the United States government to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage. But what could have prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town with more than two thousand men and only a handful of women, or for winter nights twenty hours long? And what can protect him from obsession - obsession with a woman who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and obsession with the weather kite he invents, a kite he hopes will fly higher than any has ever flown before and will penetrate the secrets of the heavens?

FROM THE CRITICS

New Yorker

In previous books, Harrison has leaned toward the lurid -- incest, the Spanish Inquisition, Chinese foot-binding -- but here she offers a more muted tale, set in Alaska in the early nineteen-hundreds. A lonely meteorologist named Bigelow yearns for female companionship, and it comes in slippery forms: a silent Aleut who skins animals before sex; a chatty prostitute who obligingly wears a gag during intercourse; a shopkeeper's daughter who stammers so violently that she communicates only through written notes. For all the eccentricity of its characters, however, the story remains inert; Harrison seems less interested in Bigelow's torment than in her own thoughts on the unpredictability of desire.

Publishers Weekly

Obsessions are Harrison's forte (The Binding Chair, etc.) and here she plumbs the mind of a young man deprived of companions, diversions and even the basic amenities of civilization who develops a passion for a woman whose very remoteness feeds his desire. In 1915, 26-year-old Bigelow Greene is sent to establish a U.S. weather station in Anchorage, a primitive settlement where the sled dogs howl all night in the 20-hour-long winter darkness. Bigelow is asingle-minded man; he first becomes obsessed with the idea of building a huge kite to measure air temperature high in the atmosphere and thus enable long-range forecasting. But he's soon smitten with a woman the locals call the Aleut. She's mysterious, enigmatic, virtually mute sex between she and Bigelow is wordless and when he discovers that she's left Anchorage, Bigelow almost goes mad with longing. Eventually, he succumbs to the lure of another woman, Miriam Getz, the daughter of the storekeeper. She, too, is mute by choice, and she proves to be a demon, the very opposite of the self-contained Aleut. Bigelow is caught in her trap. As Harrison describes the black loneliness of winter and the mosquito-infested summer days, the mood grows darker and more suspenseful, emblematic of Bigelow's desolate psyche. In perfect control of the spare narrative, Harrison writes mesmerizing, cinematically vivid scenes: Native American laborers fascinated by Caruso recordings; the gigantic kite nearly dragging Bigelow to his death off a cliff and, later, soaring into the turbulent sky of a rousing storm. Given these ominous events, and for those who know the Celtic legend of the seal wife, the ending is all the more surprising. Author tour. (May) Forecast: Harrison's excellently assimilated research about the early days of weather forecasting and about the conditions in Alaska during WWI add credibility to a novel about the inner landscape of desire. This double appeal should spark good sales. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Harrison researched 1915 Alaska and the history of weather forecasting for this book and captures the loneliness of the landscape of Bigelow's weather observatory in a railroad town where men far outnumber the women. Bigelow's dreams of a monstrous kite to help him monitor the weather patterns aloft are both comic and tragic, but, ultimately, this fails as a novel of desire. The third-person narration by Fred Stella doesn't allow the listener to enter the true intimacy of Bigelow's thoughts. The women, who are almost more symbolic than real-Aleut will not speak to him, and Miriam can only write her needs and thoughts-are potentially far more interesting than Bigelow. Not recommended.-Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

Harrison's strange and haunting novel, based in remote turn-of-the century Alaska, places the greatest challenges on a narrator. It offers only the slenderest of story lines, the obsessive love of a young meteorologist named Bigelow for an Aleut woman who will not speak to him, and, other than their lovemaking, hardly recognizes his presence at all. At the same time that he pursues this passion, Bigelow is preoccupied by a parallel consuming desire that tests him just as severely—to build a weather kite that will fly higher than any kite before. Fred Stella's reading, precise, earnest, and wise, makes us attend carefully to Harrison's lyrical writing and to her exploration of a man's fevered psyche. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews