Transformation ANNOTATION
On a journey to appease the Sea's Mother, Navarana saves the life of one of the Strangers who had come to Greenland to rescue the few Christians living there and together they find a way to end the suffering of Navarana's people.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
For several years, the Inuits in Greenland, the "Human Beings," as they call themselves, have suffered from unusually hard winters that do not let up even in what should be summertime. Navarana, a young Inuit woman, has lost both her parents to these terrible times of starvation and desperation. She decides to become a hunter and a shaman, a spirit guide, to help her people. Then she accidentally finds and reluctantly saves a stranger, Brendan, a young Irish monk. He has come to Greenland to help the Christian community and convert the "heathens." But the Christian community has disintegrated and, one by one, his fellow monks have died. Both proud and stubborn, Brendan and Navarana are immediately at odds. Gradually, however, as they learn more about each other, they develop a mutual respect. And Brendan is chosen to accompany Navarana on her perilous journey to bring back the sun.
Mette Newth is an illustrator, a translator, and the acclaimed author of The Abduction, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and The Dark Light. Formerly the director of the Norwegian Forum for Freedom of Expression, she is now head of the National College of Art in Oslo.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Set during a severe cold spell in Greenland in the mid-1400s, Norwegian author Newth's (The Dark Light) novel competently raises issues of faith and beliefs as it chronicles the coming together of an Inuit woman and a Christian monk. However, an unconvincing love story and a rushed conclusion make for an uneven read. The story alternates between the perspectives of Navarana, the young Inuit woman, and Brendan, a monk whom she discovers dying of starvation in an abandoned church and nurses back to health. He feels conflicted: these people do not look or act like the heathens he has imagined. Readers will be transfixed by descriptions of Navarana's desperate polar bear hunt (the sow becomes her spirit guide), and by the Old One's teachings (he explains that there is no food, for example, due to the Sea Mother, who was angry "because Her long hair was always filthy and tangled from the sins of Human Beings"). Brendan and Navarana's transition from friends to lovers unfortunately lacks this energy ("When they melted together, they were both aware that it was this they had longed for") and the conclusion is equally bland. The elders tell Navarana she must travel to the edge of the world and win back the sun from the trickster Raven. But their showdown is brief and rather uneventful. All in all, despite this novel's fascinating premise, something gets lost in translation. Ages 14-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
VOYA
Brendan, a young Irish monk, is sent to Greenland in the fifteenth century to convert "heathens" to Christianity in accordance with a Bull issued by Pope Nicholas V. He is convinced of the rightness of his mission and of the Church's teaching until his life is saved by the young woman, Navarana. Through his relationship with Navarana and her mentor, "the Old One," Brendan learns to respect and live in accord with the "Human Beings" (as the Inuit people call themselves) who inhabit the harsh land and who have survived three years of never-ending winter. In beautiful, elegant prose, retained in the translation from Norwegian, Newth writes about spiritual transformation and the power of faith in a story about two strong characters, different though alike, who have "grown together and can no longer be divided." Paralleling Brendan's transformation is Navarana's development into a powerful shaman as she prepares to journey to the world's end to meet Raven, who has stolen the sun. Newth weaves mysticism and myth seamlessly into her story through the fire of Raven and the three wise "Grandmother" figures who assist Navarana in her quest. Descriptions of the snowbound land—the raging of the icy wind, the "enormous whiteness" of sea, sky, and land—evoke its starkness and beauty. Newth uses setting as metaphor, as winter gives way to a land transformed by the return of the sun. Young adults who have read this Norwegian author's earlier novels, The Abduction (Farrar, 1989/VOYA February 1990) and The Dark Light (Farrar, 1998/VOYA February 1999), might enjoy this thought-provoking novel. VOYA CODES: 5Q 3P J (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Will appeal with pushing; JuniorHigh, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2000 (orig. 1997), Farrar Straus Giroux, 208p, $16. Ages 13 to 15. Reviewer: Hilary Crew
SOURCE: VOYA, October 2000 (Vol. 23, No. 4)
Alan Review
Set in fifteenth-century Greenland, this novel explores the relationship between a native Inuit woman and a young Irish missionary, both seeking answers to spiritual questions and struggling to survive in a harsh, frozen environment. Navarana saves Brendan's life when she finds him in a deserted church settlement, but Brendan is convinced he must save her soul from her "heathen" Shaman religion. The Transformation is a new look, in a very ancient setting, at the need for religious and cultural tolerance. The beautiful descriptions of the Greenlandic landscape mixed with the mystical visions and awakenings experienced by the characters make for fascinating reading. This story would be especially appropriate for high school and mature middle school readers. Genre: Historical Fiction. 2000, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 195 pp., $16.00. Ages 12 up. Reviewer: Patti Cleary; Peninsula, Ohio
KLIATT
This is quite a remarkable book, demanding, satisfying. The style is poetic, filled with myth-like language and spiritual themes. Occasionally the translation is somewhat clunky, but generally it works to convey an exotic world in a murky past. This world is Greenland in the 15th century, with Navarana and her Inuit people enduring an endless winter, a winter that has killed off the strangers who had tried to settle there. Navarana finds one surviving young monk named Brendan, who had come to save the heathens from eternal damnation and now must somehow save his own life. Actually, Navarana saves his life, and carries him off to the small settlement where her young sisters live with the Old One, their spiritual leader. How this small group finds a way to survive by moving to a safer place, and how Navarana and Brendan transform themselves into a loving couple, is the spine of this plot. Killing polar bears and other animals for food, surviving the biting cold of the Arctic—these are the adventures. Finding spiritual strength in themselves and each other, in the Inuit's way and in Christianity, is the greater theme, the transformation. It is the spiritual world that enables each of them to survive and make a way for their people to survive. These religious obsessions may be incomprehensible to some YA readers, but those who persevere will find perhaps a whole new way of looking at the natural world and at human nature. This world of ice and snow, sled dogs, igloos, spirit guides and the coming together of the Sea's Mother and the Madonna is a world not soon forgotten by any reader. KLIATT Codes: JS—Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2000 (orig. 1997),Farrar Straus & Giroux, 195p, $16.00. Ages 13 to 18. Reviewer: Claire Rosser; September 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 5)
Kirkus Reviews
Set in the harsh and unforgiving environment of 15th-century Greenland, this is a story of two people from vastly different cultures coming to love and depend on each other. Navarana is hunting a polar bear during what should have been Greenland's summer. But for the past three years, the summer weather has been as brutal as winter, leaving the "Human Beings" (native Greenlanders) starving, fighting among themselves, and wondering what they've done to deserve such a severe punishment. Spotting the bear near an abandoned settlement of "strangers" (Europeans), Navarana ventures into the settlement and kills the bear. As she is sheltering in the abandoned village, she wanders into a church and finds a young man, little older than herself, who has somehow survived whatever has killed the rest of the village's population. Brendan, a monk originally from Ireland, had answered the Pope's entreaty for priests and monks to save "the Holy Church's farthest outpost." Navarana rescues him, bringing him back to her settlement and back to life. She resents Brendan, who has become her responsibility, and yet she's intrigued by him. Brendan also feels mixed emotions about his rescuer—he hates that Navarana pities him and hates that he is totally dependent on her for his survival, leaving him feeling humiliated and emasculated. Despite embracing much of the Greenlanders' way of life, Brendan remains committed to Christianity, although he feels he was ill-prepared by the Church, which told him that the heathens were literally monsters who would show only gratitude to the monks for bringing them salvation. He never expected them to be real people with beliefs of their own that meant as much to themashis own did to him. One night, Brendan and Nava sleep together (or as the author delicately puts it, they "melted together") and realize that they love each other and are meant to spend the rest of their lives together. While the story dollops out big servings of Inuit mysticism and spirituality that often verges on the trite, and has language that is too often stilted, passages that are overly wordy, and a sometimes confusing plot, there is definitely something intriguing and fascinating in watching these two characters learn to accept and love each other. (Fiction. YA) Nikola-Lisa, W. THE YEAR WITH GRANDMA MOSES Illus. by Grandma Moses Henry Holt (32 pp.) Oct. 2000
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