Ian's Reviews > Three Day Road

The time setting is 1919, and at a train station in Northern Ontario a Native Canadian woman, Niska, meets her nephew, Xavier Bird, on his return from active service in WWI. Xavier returns from the war a broken man in every sense. One leg has been amputated below the knee, he is addicted to morphine, and he is suffering from severe post traumatic stress. The two make a three day canoe journey back to Niska's camp, and during the journey the story of Xavier's wartime experiences is told in flashback style, interspersed with the story of Niska's life and Xavier's pre-war childhood. The novel's central relationship is between Xavier and his childhood friend Elijah Whiskeyjack, who is also his comrade in the trenches, but who undergoes a progressive brutalisation as the war itself progresses.

The author has written another novel "Through Black Spruce", featuring Xavier's children and grandchildren, which I had previously read and which I thought was excellent. That gave me high expectations of "Three Day Road" which I would have to say were not fully realised. There are plenty of plus points. The quality of writing is good, and the novel has a strong culture clash theme as well as the inherent pathos of a WWI setting. In some ways it also challenged my own sense of morality, and it is no bad thing when a novel gets you thinking in that way. At the same time, I never found myself emotionally engaged with either the main characters or the plot as a whole. It probably didn't help that from early chapters I started to anticipate the broad outline of the plot, and it did turn out much as I had thought. For me, the plot also incorporated too much magic and mysticism. I have no overriding objections to including those kind of elements in a novel, but in this one too much was resolved simply by the summoning or exorcism of spirits, a plot device I found very unconvincing.

Glancing at the other reviews, my view seems to be a minority one, and most other people have rated this much more highly. I can only say what my honest reaction was.