Monkey Beach won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, was nominated for the Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. But at the heart of Monkey Beach is family intimacy.

Haisla mysticism is laid on pretty thick and there are enough forays up remote inlets for a National Geographic article there are also sasquatch sightings, bits of Haisla vocabulary, a two-page explanation of oolichan grease and a somewhat wonky ending. Lisamarie respects that her grandmother Ma-ma-oo is a guardian of tradition but she also has less tangible advisors-ghosts, sasquatches and animal spirits-as she journeys in her speedboat up Douglas Channel to Monkey Beach, a remote stretch of shore renowned for Sasquatch sightings. Uncle Mick is a Native-rights activist and an Elvis fan. She veers towards danger rather than away from it as the Hills family melds their Haisla heritage with Western ways. Subject to premonitions, the narrator, Lisamarie-named for Elvis Presley's daughter-explores Haisla community life on the central coast. It was also a New York Times Editor's Choice and Notable Book of the Year.ĮNTRY: For many years Eden Robinson had struggled with a more personal story, Monkey Beach (Knopf, 2000), her first novel about a confused teenager who is coming to terms with her 17-year-old brother's disappearance at sea, probably by drowning. Not necessarily autobiographical and mostly concerning dysfunctional families, Traplines (Knopf 1996) won the Winifred Holtby Prize for best work of short fiction by a Commonwealth writer. In 1996 she published Traplines, a critically acclaimed collection of four short stories that she wrote in four months at UBC's Creative Writing department. She worked as a mail clerk, dry cleaner and receptionist prior to attending writing courses at UBC. LITERARY LOCATION: Kitamaat Village, at the head of the Douglas Channel, home to approximately 700 of the 1700 Haisla members, 10 kilometres from Kitimat and 45 kilometres from the Terrace Airport.īorn in 1968 on the Haisla Nation Kitamaat Reserve, Eden Robinson grew up in Kitimaat, a Haisla village near the mostly white community of Kitimat, located east of the Queen Charlotte Islands on the coast of mainland B.C.

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson