The Nature of Things

My rating: 2 of 5 stars One of the hardest parts of reading this book, which was the July selection of my local Mystery Book Club, was reading the descriptions of the food enjoyed by its half-Inuit heroine. Seal blood soup. Fried blubber. Bloody fish just pulled from the water. Walrus guts. The writer lovingly describes all of this, as well as other aspects of Inuit culture. While I admire the Inuit's ability to survive the harsh environment of the frozen North and I understand that to do so they must use what is available to them, as a wannabe vegetarian who abstains from red meat in the diet, I found the descriptions of the food stomach-turning in the extreme. An Inuit would probably find my fondness for green beans, broccoli and carrots equally stomach-turning. The second hardest part of reading the book was...reading the book. The writing was just sort of all over the place. The plot meandered along, zigzagging here and there to no real purpose that I could discern. I felt the ...