What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
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The Shadow Boxer
SOLVED: Adult Fiction
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SOLVED. Canadian novel in which a man spends a winter on an island in Lake Superior [s]
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What's the Name of That Book???
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The Shadow Boxer (other topics)The Shadow Boxer (other topics)
The Shadow Boxer (other topics)
The first is when the character is a child living in northern Ontario. He lives with his father, who is maybe in the shipping industry, and who is divorced from his Quebecois mother. The Quebecois mother is remarried and spends lots of time traveling the world, and sometimes the main character goes on these trips with her. I think there's a brother too.
The father is an alcoholic, and he and his cronies are very interested in the Edmund Fitzgerald, and maybe exaggerate their involvement in its wreck. Part of his time up north is spent with a girl named Meeka Green, with whom he has an adolescent romance. At one point, the main character swims from the mainland to an island in Lake Superior, and is struck by how difficult it is.
...SPOILERS BELOW...
The second part of the book takes place in Toronto, where the main character gets involved with a musician who plays in local bars. They begin living together and she gets pregnant, but miscarries. They break up, and he is in despair.
The third part of the book takes place on an island, I believe in Lake Superior, where the main character has decided to spend the winter writing. Near the beginning of his stay (in the fall), he witnesses boaters set fire to a bird that he has befriended, and when he finds it dying on the island, smashes it with a rock to end its suffering. While he is on the island for the winter, he injures his hand and ends up self-amputating his little finger.
At the end of the winter, he leaves the island and discovers that his former girlfriend had had his daughter while he was on the island. At the end of the novel, he takes his daughter to look at the island from the mainland.