The Canterbury trail

277 pages

English language

Published Feb. 20, 2011 by Brindle & Glass.

ISBN:
978-1-897142-50-9
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OCLC Number:
670421129

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4 stars (1 review)

The Canterbury Trail brings together a motley collection of ski bums, hippies, yuppies, poseurs and snowmobile-riding rednecks on a late winter trip into the mountains around the fictional Coalton, B.C. Coalton is a close fit with Abdou's home of Fernie, a powder-skiing haven that uneasily combines an economic base of coal mining with a mountain escape for Calgary's moneyed classes.

1 edition

Review of 'The Canterbury trail' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I am sadly not familiar with Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, so I cannot comment on Angie Adbou's adherence or deviations to the original plot. What I can say is that Adbou is a first-class writer who captures the fluidity and exertions of the human body like few others. While her debut novel The Bone Cage was far more centered around a sports theme, Trail shows that Adbou really knows her stuff when it comes to the white powder and those who live to frolic in it. Adbou understands that sex, drugs, and alcohol are key components of the lifestyle, but she never lets the stereotypes become, well, stereotypical. These ski bums, mountain men, snow bunnies, and extreme snowboarders may be the equivalent of Canadian archetypes, but Adbou cannily subverts our expectations at every turn, finding unexpected pockets of humanity beneath the layers of Gore-Tex. This is not an …

Subjects

  • Skiers
  • Ski mountaineering
  • Fiction

Places

  • British Columbia