Audrey Schulman, The Cage, polar bears, arctic, photographer, female, literary, book groups, fiction, adventure, heroine, strong female character
The Cage
Best-seller in Canada
One of the 12
novels selected by the American
Library Association as a Notable Novel of 1994
Optioned for a
movie with director, Wes Craven
.
Lyrical...
Suspenseful... Schulman's heroine is a true original transformed
emotionally and physically by experiences marvelously imagined and compellingly
described.
Los Angeles Times
.
Unsettling... Guaranteed to chill
Entertainment Weekly
.
Fascinating... Totally different... A great adventure story... Audrey Schulman does a
beautiful job of balancing adventure, suspense and self-discovery in a book
that is chilling in every sense of the word.
Michele
Ross, book critic, CNN
.
Quirky
and thoughtful... Schulman renders the strange beauties of a world that
draws on resources scarcely known to us... She shapes her story as tightly as
the cage Beryl takes her pictures from.
The New York Times
.
Fine character
writing... a genuine page-turner
with literary content.
Boston Globe
.
Part survival story,
part coming-of-age tale, this narrative mixes rich characterization with
detailed observation of the natural world and crisply described action, and the
effect is startling and memorable...
Schulman artfully blends suspense
with details of chilling authenticity... People will talk about this book.
Publishers Weekly
.
Wonderfully evocative...
An enthralling book,
relentlessly plotted and gracefully written.
New York Newsday
.
Audrey Schulman has
written a powerful first novel that demands comparison with the best of
contemporary fiction. THE CAGE is a brilliant piece of literary
virtuosity, driven by spare, taut prose and a sharp knowing eye.
Toronto Globe and Mail
.
Mesmerizing... compact, richly imagined, compelling to the last
page... symbol-studded and rich in metaphor, an allegorical tale of spiritual
as well as physical survival.
Philadelphia Inquirer
.
Horrific... Schulman's
prose is cool and intelligent, her imagery arresting... It was days after I finished the book
before I warmed up.
Books In Canada
.
A gripping tale of pride and endurance
and the wreckage of human miscalculation... Taut, intelligent and quietly
lyrical, Schulman's riveting tale... is a fictional coup of the first order.
London (Ont.) Free Press
Plot Description
Widely acclaimed throughout the U.S. and Canada, the
debut novel from Audrey Schulman reveals a talent as dazzling as the arctic
landscape she so brilliantly evokes.
Beryl
is a nature photographer on an expedition to photograph polar bears up close
from inside a small iron cage. She has never photographed animals larger than
deer before and has usually worked in zoos, not in the wild. Now she is
challenging herself to face the world's largest land carnivore in the bone
aching cold of an unforgiving terrain.
Despite
the expedition's state-of-the-art equipment, it is not long before things begin
to go disastrously wrong. Soon the cold --unrelenting and pervasive-- invades
Beryl's world. Until all that remains between her and safety is the white,
uncompromising vastness of the windswept tundra... and the polar bears that
inhabit it.
THE
CAGE is an unparalleled literary adventure-- the story of shy and socially
awkward photographer Beryl Findham, and her search for self in the most
desolate corner of the Earth, among the most dangerous creatures that live.
Excerpt
Beryl
holds an icecube in her hand as she sits in her closet. The air is humid with
the slow heat of August. The water from the ice drips steadily down her arm.
Her palm hurts from the cold. She holds the ice trying to imagine herself in
temperatures of thirty and forty below, not including the windchill factor. She
tries to see herself sitting outside in a metal cage, a cage too small to move
around in to keep warm.
The
wind blows. All sound echoes close and loud. Snow shivers across the ground.
She sits, her legs crossed. The only warmth for miles around is contained in
the heavy arms of the white bears who mill about her cage, curious, strong and
hungry. The snow squeaks beneath their feet. Pale mist blows at her from their
black mouths. The bears push their wide white faces forward, against the cage.
They suck in her smell, snort out. Steam touches her skin. Her face, like their
beards, is covered with frozen water crystals --it's moisture from their
breath, from her breath.
She
understands if the cage wasn't here, if it fails in any way, they will kill
her. They'll reach in, rip the biceps from her flailing arms, the bowels from
her belly, the tendons from her neck. They'll bite and tear, swallow. Her body
will jerk at first beneath their strength, then slowly slacken. Her neck will
roll back for their touch as though for a kiss.
Her
eyes watch, dark and small, like their's.
The
icecube makes the bones of her hand ache.
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