Bibliofreakblog

Seal Intestine Raincoat by Rosie Chard

The Seal Intestine Raincoat in the book’s title turns out to be exactly that: a raincoat made from seal intestines.  It was made a long time ago by a now homeless old Inuit man in the Northern reaches of Canada.  

Fred, having recently moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba (that’s in Canada guys) from London, England with his parents befriends the old Inuit man, Ata, who makes a prescient gift of the raincoat.

This raincoat, along with the stories that Ata tells him of his childhood, will inspire in Fred the courage to survive a week in December with no electricity, gas, or much food.  Plus take care of his mother and the strangers who come to stay in his new house waiting out the storm.

What I really appreciated about this book, was that it was not overly campy.  Never does Chard opine about our lost survival skills, never do her characters do anything that seems unrealistic, and the romantic thread of the story stays at a minimum.  

While I did find it a little strange that Fred, the newcomer to Canada, and weather -24 degrees Celsius, takes charge and battles his way through the snow, the logic was mostly laid out.  One man, focusing on a dwindling supply of alcohol can’t be bothered.  Another man leaves on the first day.  His wife shuts down, worry after her husband.  Fred’s mother becomes the de facto mother for the children.  Fred’s dad is out of town on business.  

However, there is a teenaged girl (enter romantic plot-summary here), and I would think that she would have been far more equipped to trudge out into the snow because at least she has, you know, seen snow before.

But, it’s not her story.  It’s Fred’s story, so I guess, given the logic that sets up the narrative, a little exception can be made for Our Hero.

And the logic is this: In the weeks before the storm, gas prices shoot up to over $4/liter.  I figure a liter is, what, a third or a half of a gallon (in my mind I’m comparing a two-liter of pop to a gallon of milk), and if your average car holds maybe 12 or 15 gallons thats let’s say 25 or 30 liters and that is $120 Canadian to fill up, which, I know that the U.S. dollar is not very strong at all, but let’s say that’s $150 or so American (please adjust for pounds, Euros, accordingly).  So, of course, this creates a gas shortage and the gas stations actually run out of gas.  Then, big storm and no electricity.  

Now, I’m looking around my kitchen and as I just went to Costco the other day, I’m pretty stocked up.  I could probably feed seven people for a long time, provided they don’t mind eating granola bars and Ramen noodles.  But, this family is from England, right?  And they just moved there a month ago, and so they probably don’t have stock piles of things like flour and sugar and 8 different kinds of vinegar like I do.  Plus, being all Englishy, the mom can’t get used to the big refrigerators and prefers to go to the store once a day or two days rather than horde away food for the Zombie Apocalypse like I do (actually, I prefer to go to the store a few times a week, too, but I still do big Costco shopping trips, which provides a nice foundation).  

Also, they run out of fire wood, and since they just moved across the pond, which is actually quite large and expensive to move stuff, they don’t have a whole lot of wooden furniture, nor do they have an ax (come to think of it, neither do I, which is a problem Zombie-Apocalypse-wise).  

So, what do they do?  They try to stay warm.  They don’t dash about madly, they don’t mount big excursions.  They go hungry.  They use body heat.  It’s like what you or I would probably really do (excepting that I would have more food, as above-stated).  Which, while maybe not as compelling as far as plots go, made for really good characters and overall a good read.

Yo FTC: I received this book as part of the Green Books Campaign from Eco-Libris.
Buy Seal Intestine Raincoat on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Froze Tears by Mary Ann MacAfee
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut by John Bennet
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Lawrence Gonzales
The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic by Melanie McGrath
World War Z by Max Brooks
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Other  Works by Rosie Chard:

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