Rebecca's Reviews > The Mountain Can Wait

(3.5) The novel opens and closes with a hit-and-run, but in between those momentous peaks it’s a quieter tale of a single father trying to guide his son and daughter into young adulthood in the wilds of Canada’s west and islands. Tom Berry’s work is not cutting trees down but planting them – an interesting adaptation of a traditional woodsman’s activity to a new eco age. Although he still has the old hunting skills, he’s more often involved in diplomatic negotiations with his son and his crew of planters than he is with wild animals.

I found the story a little sleepy but loved Leipciger’s writing, especially her account of the daily drudgery of manual labor and her descriptions of wilderness scenery:

“These were long, arduous days, one rolling into the next, broken only by the lacing and unlacing of boots, the taping of fingers, the washing of tin plates. Every day, slotting one or two thousand trees into the hard ground, trudging through unsympathetic terrain”

“Tom and Bobbie walked through the trees, long bars of shadow and silver-blue bark, stepping in the dead, slippery mulch of dropped cherries and peaches, to find a dark cabin with the door unlocked and no one inside.”

Leipciger is a Canadian settled in the UK; her debut novel is obviously born out of nostalgia for the possibilities of a wide open country. I’ll look out for her next book.

Related reading: Something about the emotional tenor reminded me of Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, while Road Ends by Mary Lawson shares the rural Canada setting.