Cargo of Orchids
Susan Musgrave's novel Cargo of Orchids is an exploration of the poetics of despair and a warning about the futility of incarceration and execution. Musgrave, winner of the Tilden Award for Poetry and an established fiction writer, is the enfant terrible of Canadian literature. Among her transgressions against propriety was her prison wedding to Stephen Reid, a convicted bank robber and the author of Jackrabbit Parole. With Reid back behind bars after a return to armed robbery, Musgrave has been a vocal advocate for prisoners' rights. Cargo of Orchids is a plea against the death penalty and a meditation on motherhood and loss. Although the book is filled with poetic imagery, dark humour, and irony, it often reads more like a pulp thriller than a literary novel. The unnamed narrator, a former translator of Spanish, drifts into the company of Colombian drug lords known as "Las Blancas. " She becomes pregnant by one of them during a visit to a British Columbia prison, and then is kidnapped by her lover's wife and held hostage in horrible conditions off the coast of South America. She returns to the North America only to be framed for the murder of her child and sent to death row in California. While advocacy groups clamour for her release, she makes friends with Rainy and Frenchy, two women on death row who don't have the kind of background--Canadian, white, middle-class--that attracts attention outside the prison walls. In its passionate advocacy, Cargo of Orchids is a standout among recent Canadian novels, many of which are, for the most part, clever little books about nothing. If its prose is overwrought and its message lacking in subtlety, this narrative is also a breach in the wall of respectability that protects most of her readers from the nightmare lived by the rest of the world. --Robyn Gillam Author(s): Susan Musgrave. Binding Paperback. Publisher(s): Vintage Canada. Label: Vintage Canada.
| Fabricant: | Vintage Canada |
| Numéro de la pièce: | |
| Prix le plus bas (CAD): | 8,02 $ |
Caractéristiques du produit |
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| Auteur : | Susan Musgrave |
| Format : | Paperback |
| Marque : | Vintage Canada |
| Title : | Title C-E |
