Salt

By Jeremy Page

Book Overview

A family saga that explores the relationship between people and the landscape in which they live, Jeremy Page's atmospheric and lyrical debut novel is revelatory in its use of language and is the work of a significant new writer. Salt tells of a German airman who falls from the sky in 1945 and lands in the middle of a salt marsh in England. Goose, a local woman, digs him up and brings him home. After staying for just nine months, he vanishes in a makeshift boat, leaving Goose behind with a newborn daughter, Lil. Taught to read the clouds by her mother, Lil's childhood is curious and strange, but when she becomes the object of two brothers' desire, her life takes a tragic turn. Fifteen years later, it is Lil's son, Pip, who attempts to make sense of his family's intriguing history. Beguiled by the lovely Elsie who lives nearby, Pip grows up in the marsh like generations before him, but will their unfortunate past repeat itself?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143114123
• ISBN13: 9780143114123
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

As I Closed The Back Cover, I Closed My Eyes And Said A Silent Thanks For A Tale Well Told

Once, long ago, there was a time when books could rise through the ranks of their peers to stand as timeless classics that needed only their title and author as an introduction. GRAPES OF WRATH, CATCHER IN THE RYE, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, MOBY DICK, LITTLE WOMEN, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, all of these monoliths will ever need is their reputation to proceed them. Those days are gone, my friends. In bookstores of today the shelves are lined with so-called classics that only need a stamp of approval from Oprah's Book Club (which usually requires a certain amount of sap oozing from the material) to gain attention. Fleeting attention, I should say, since the self-life of fame is short in the written world these days. And in the flood of ready-made popularity, true, timeless gems are swept away into the shoals of obscurity. Such is the case with SALT. When I found a copy of it sitting on the shelf of a local bookstore, I was intrigued by the unlikely cover, and so, ignoring the ancient warning, judged it to be a worth while expenditure. And this time, I was right to have done so. The tale begins not with an introduction to the narrator, as one would expect, but on the windswept flats of Norfolk, England. The year is 1945, the "Good War" was almost over, and being incapacitated on the shores of enemy soil is one place a young German soldier would not wish to find himself. But there he is, sunk neck-deep in a salt marsh, at the mercy of a strange young woman who happens to be passing by. Without a second thought given to wartime etiquette, Goose, as we learn the girl is called, fishes "Hands," as she mistakenly calls him, from the grip of the marsh, takes him home, cleans him up, and cooks him a meal. And so Hands stays, at least until Goose, nine months later, goes into labor with the child they conceived. At this point, Hands vanishes out to sea on a makeshift boat, leaving Goose to deliver the child alone. We are then privy to the tale of Goose and Hands daughter, Lil' whose strange upbringing causes her to be something of an enticing mystery to a pair of brothers with the unlikely monikers of "Shrimp" and "Kipper." This attention eventually sees her off the marsh in disgrace at age 16, with the younger of the brothers at her side. She and her young, almost-husband, move inland to start a different life together. At last, ninety-two pages in, we meet our strange narrator: Pip. A child born without a cry, much to his parent's dismay, and who, from his first moments out of the womb on, never utters a word. Pip communicates with the outside world by means of a notebook that always hangs about his neck, but we lucky ones are allowed a look inside Pip's head, which is a strange place indeed. He tells his tale in an almost non-linear fashion, alluding to future events as though they have already happened and describing his dreams and fantasies as though they were really happening, only to snap back to reality several pages later. Through his few lucid momen

moving, sprawling

This is a fantastic first novel, the sort of highly-literary treatise on family that would be remarkable coming late in an author's career-but, as it is, it's a wonder and a treat to consume.