Lost in the Barrens in Never too Late to Read Classics

Dec 26, 2024 Manybooks rated it really liked it

Shelves: survival, four-seasons-winter, childrens-literature, first-nations-native-american-metis, canadiana, book-reviews

While Farley Mowat’s 1956 young adult novel Lost in the Barrens (also known as Two Against the North) is a purely fictional tale (unlike for example his Never Cry Wolf and People of the Deer), Mowat's featured text does in my humble opinion read delightfully realistically and that his sense of geographic place (Northern Manitoba and Southwestern Northwest Territories) is absolutely spot-on, is totally spectacular, with Lost in the Barrens being a fast paced and intensely detailed survival tale o While Farley Mowat’s 1956 young adult novel Lost in the Barrens (also known as Two Against the North) is a purely fictional tale (unlike for example his Never Cry Wolf and People of the Deer), Mowat's featured text does in my humble opinion read delightfully realistically and that his sense of geographic place (Northern Manitoba and Southwestern Northwest Territories) is absolutely spot-on, is totally spectacular, with Lost in the Barrens being a fast paced and intensely detailed survival tale of two teenaged boys (one of Scottish background, one Cree) who are forced to survive the harsh and relentless winter conditions of northern Canada after they become separated from the caribou hunting party with whom they are travelling, due to Jamie being a trifle foolish and too eager to explore (and also convincing his friend Awasin to tag along). But thankfully, while Jamie is shown as both impulsive and a trifle naive, he is thankfully also not depicted by Farley Mowat as arrogant, entitled and whiny in Lost in the Barrens, which is one of the main bones of contention I have with the movie version, where Jamie starts out as an annoyingly elitist snob, looking down on his uncle Angus and Angus' Cree friends and only slowly learns to appreciate and become friendly with and towards Awasin and which happily is not the case in Lost in the Barrens (the book) as in the novel Awasin and Jamie are shown by Mowat as pretty much immediately becoming friends upon Jamie's arrival at his uncle Angus' home and with the only problematic and potentially not all that politically correct element being that Farley Mowat uses words like Indian and Eskimo instead of First Nations and Inuit but that this is of course to be expected in a novel published in 1956.

But albeit the main protagonists of Lost in the Barrens, although the above mentioned Awasin and Jamie are sometimes perhaps just a bit too fortunate as well as seemingly all encompassingly skilled to be totally believable, this both does not really bother me (and in particular my inner teenager who totally adored Lost in the Barrens when she read the novel in 1980) and indeed also makes for an interesting and fast-moving account (and where Farley Mowat also does not shy away from showing the harshness and potential dangers of winter). And yes, it is of course mostly Awasin’s skill and courage that make survival (and even flourishing in the so-called barrens) possible in the first place, although Jamie is inventive and never shirks his responsibilities and duties, that in Lost in the Barrens Jamie and Awasin are both friends and work as a team, share everything and all duties (however and just to point out, Farley Mowat does show extensive scenes of fishing and hunting in Lost in the Barrens, including shooting caribou does still nursing fawns, but that this is obviously necessary for survival).

A solidly four star reading experience both in 1980 and now in 2024 Lost in the Barrens has been, and while some readers might want more character development in Lost in the Barrens, more inner and emotional depth, for me, the latter is not really all that necessary and that the passages of Lost in the Barrens that have Mowat describing in meticulous detail how Jamie and Awasin hunt and preserve their food, build their cabin, manage their fuel supply etc. (all that is required for survival in a northern Canadian winter wilderness) are interesting, engaging and never tedious or dragging. And while the happy ending for Lost in the Barrens is indeed a bit of a deus ex machina, with Jamie and Awasin foolishly deciding to leave the relative comfort and safety of the cabin they had built to try to find their way back and then being rescued by an Inuit, or rather by someone half Inuit and half Scottish at just at the moment of possible despair, well and for me, Farley Mowat's story for Lost in the Barrens is fun, engaging. very much readable (and also to be recommended). ...more

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