The big why: a novel
Canadian fiction, General fiction, Historical fiction
Human-narrated audio
Summary
American landscape painter Rockwell Kent, a dandified frontiersman with a weakness for stark landscapes and fertile women, settles in Brigus, Newfoundland, in the spring of 1914. He begins befriending the locals and painting the scenery, but as the novelty of… his presence wears off - and as the war in Europe stokes paranoia in the British Empire - he begins to systematically alienate his hosts, until he is eventually deported as a suspected spy. Kent is an aesthete, an ugly American, a socialist, and a compulsive philanderer, moving to Newfoundland in search of a Marxian pastoral, but is ultimately a man out of step with his time. Some strong language and descriptions of sex. 2004.