KnittingJenny


Home


Knitting


Books


All about me



Completed
24 May 2009
Title
White Fang
Author
Jack London
Published
1906
Quote
"Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness----a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild."
Review
I love the way Jack London writes.

Like my other love, Hemingway, London writes so simply yet so very vividly. I just love it; I love everything about it. Except, perhaps, in this book, I'd had enough of the dog and wolf descriptions from the middle of, say, Chapter One.

Suffice it to say, I'm not a dog fan. I was not a dog fan well before my brother's unruly dog recently chomped on a skein of my fine alpaca. Yarn in the dog's mouth, all slurpy! How revolting! I had to vigorously wash the yarn and dry it before I could use it again. Why can't dog owners control their dogs?

This book, White Fang, really gives you the sense of what it's like to be out there alone, in the wilderness. The cold, the isolation, the danger. London's done such a good job of sucking you into the locale. I love this book. Makes me want to go take a hike in the mountains.



For next book review, please click here.