Stephen is a priest who has come back to Sawgamet, the small town in B.C. that he grew up in, to take care of his dying mother. While there, memories of his childhood come back to him, as well as stories that his grandfather told about the founding of the town and how he came to be in Sawgamet and his life there.

I found it a little bit confusing at times, as we shifted back and forth in three different time periods – Stephen’s “current” time frame, the time period from when he was a child, and the time frame from when his grandfather arrived, founded the town, married, and a particularly harsh winter his grandparents went through when the town was literally buried in snow. It wasn’t always obvious which time period we were suddenly in. I found the grandfather’s story the most interesting (and luckily, that was the majority of the story), but overall, I would consider the book “o.k.”. I have to say that the descriptions of the harsh winters were very vivid. ( )

Soooo good! Reminds me of Three Day Road and the first third of John Irvings latest....cannot believe this is a first novel! ( )

I won this book in a giveaway. A well written story that almost felt like it was being told over a campfire. Is it true is it not... kept me guessing and occasionally looking over my shoulder. Good read! ( )

Zentner presents a fascinating, historical story of hardship, endurance and superstition set in the British Columbia/Yukon interior around the late 19th century. The characters are well-defined, the environmental descriptions vivid, the plot intriguing.

Memorable, readable, recommended. ( )

A novel about Stephen, a pastor who returns to his cold northern home town to care for his dying mother..... Sounds like a boring plot, but this book is very well written. I actually felt cold and needed a warm blanket to read this, because I truly felt like I was there. I can't wait to read his next novel. ( )

Excellent protrayal of what it must have been like for the first of the European immigrants to move to the further reaches of Western Canada during the times of the several gold rushes. It's not about the populating of the land. It's not about the finding of gold. It's more about the relationship of three generations of a family with an extremely harsh, deadly environment and the spirits and creatures of an unknown land. It's a very original style of telling that I have a hard time classifying. It has elements of paranormal or perhaps fantasy or perhaps myth or perhaps one of a couple other categories but I didn't feel like it fit anywhere. Those elements were important parts of the telling and important parts of the lives of the people but they weren't focal points at all. They also didn't seem so paranormal or fantastical in context. They seemed more a true part of the history. I had a hard time eventually even considering them as myth. I'm considering this as pure historical fiction = and one of the most interesting that I've read. This is going to be reread and that's going to happen when I can read it straight through in a day or two. Two thirds of the way through I was regretting having had to take too many breaks during the reading and stretching it out to over a week. Something about it seems to require remaining more continually immersed in the story.

Anyone interested in or studying the earliest expansion west of the European immigrants on this continent has to read this to get an amazing feel for the realities of the time and place. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book--it was a fast, compelling read. I enjoyed how the stories of the three generations were intertwined and advanced together. I had to pay close attention to which story was being told at any given time; however, I thought this made for a richer storytelling than if it had been simply told chronologically. I would have liked to know more about Stephen (the grandson), but perhaps there are more stories to still be told here.

I would class this as Canadian wilderness gothic or Canadian magic realism--plenty of ghosts, monsters, and magic. I look forward to reading future novels by Zentner. He has a real gift for the story. ( )

Different.
Three plot lines: the narrative one, set in WWII in the narrator's adolescent home where he's tending to his dying mother, reflecting back in preparation for her eulogy.
He reflects back on the winter his mother remarries and his grandfather returns. He also weaves in stories of his grandfather's youth and the town's origins with his father's youth. All of this, plus the fact that the narrator is a priest, gives the story credibility. Credibility is essential, because the myths the boy/man tells are fantasic and otherwise unbelievable. Yet I found myself believing to some extent.
Most of the story takes place during winter scenes, so it makes sense to read it in winter.
My one pet peeve is that when the grandfather and boy and his cousin find a particular tree, the grandfather points to "gashes" high up in the tree and claims that he was last at the tree when the gashes were at his knees. Trees do not grow up this way; new cells are added at the top, not the bottom, so the gashes would still be knee level, but they'd probably be grown over by the widening trunk and undiscernible.

Everything else about the book is good. ( )

Such a refreshing and different story, a magical way of interpreting life's events. I loved this book. ( )

This was an ER novel I received, set in the wilds of Canada. I’ve been intrigued with the cold areas of the world of late – mostly because I just cannot understand how a body could survive. The novel is multi-generational, spanning from the founding of the town to roughly present day. There’s an air of magical realism, family tragedies, lyrical descriptions of nature. All of which led me to quite enjoy this slow-paced story. I even found it somehow comforting even though the themes are not particularly happy ones.

My grandfather lifted the cup of tea and blew on it again. We were waiting for him to speak, and like any good storyteller he savored the anticipation, letting us dangle for just an extra moment. “I came back,” he said, “to introduce Stephen to his grandmother.”
“What?” My mother stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
“Why have I come back to Sawgamet? Why now?” He looked at me. “I’ve come for your grandmother,” he said. “I’ve come to raise the dead.”

Touch is a remarkable debut novel, part ghost story, part fantasy, part gritty historical fiction, and totally engaging. Set in the frigid wilds of western Canada, Touch strongly evokes the rawness of the 19th century frontier, with its gold rushes and timber booms, its fortunes won and lost, and its relentlessly harsh conditions. It’s a family drama as well, with more than few flourishes of magical realism and a likeable narrator who keeps things moving along. That narrator, Stephen, is a pastor who has recently returned to his home town of Sawgamet in western Canada, where he finds his ailing mother at the edge of death. Much of the present day story takes place during the final evening of his mother’s life, as Stephen contemplates her mortality and, as a result, his own. As he prepares for her death, Stephen’s mind plays back over a series of memories, which form the bulk of the novel. Many of the stories he relates concern his father, who died when Stephen was a child, and his grandfather, who disappeared when Stephen’s own father was quite young. The circumstances of these deaths and disappearances are made clearer as the narration goes along.
Touch is a remarkable book. Its setting and characters are infused with magic. The woods are populated by wektiko and qallupiluit, mythical creatures that hunt men and children; a shining, golden caribou lopes through snowy trails; a spring deep in the forest bubbles with syrupy sweet water; a sweetheart is brought back from the dead; and an entire town is buried alive under 50 feet of snow for seven months.
The people who populate Sawgamet accept this magic in their lives but remain awed, as did I. The glade was full of the floating gold dust, and in the light, Jeannot and Martine thought they had found some sort of fairy kingdom, each fleck of dust a sprite. Amid the magic is horror: murder and other violent deaths, cannibalism, and monsters that lure victims into the icy river to drown. The story is slippery and complex, but told with seemingly effortless ease. Touch is indeed a gem of a book.
It is lovely just lovely! Will definitely be looking out for more of Alexi Zentner. ( )

Touch is a magical novel about a family who founded Sawgamet in northern Canada, as told by the grandson, Pierre. The descriptions, especially of the first major snowstorm are intense, beautiful and absolutely captivating. The characters are very believable – the grandfather Jeannot, the father Pierre and the grandmother Martine – and their manner of dealing with both the practical elements and the superstitious, mythical and magical elements of northern living brings depth to the story. A great read. ( )

Stephen Boucher returns with his wife and three children to his remote northern B.C. hometown of Sawgamet to replace his stepfather as the Anglican minister. As he spends time with his mother in her last days, he reminisces about his childhood 30 years earlier, including the deaths of his father and sister. Another significant event is the return of Jeannot, Stephen's paternal grandfather. The return of this larger-than-life character leads to the telling of his life in Sawgamet, which he founded, until the death of his wife Martine.

On the one hand the book is historical fiction, an ode to a mining/logging town and the hardships of its inhabitants, and a saga of the tragedies and triumphs of three generations of a family. It is a story about family stories and memories passed from one generation to the next, "memories [that] are another way to raise the dead." The stories are full of great love, endurance, and unimaginable loss.

The novel is also a fantasy imbued with Inuit mythology. The wilderness is a character of mystery beyond modern rationality, often indifferent but sometimes generous and sometimes malicious. It is populated by a golden caribou, malevolent wood spirits, river demons, a spring with syrupy sweet water, and the ghost of a miner who was murdered and cannibalized.

Some of the myths struck a chord, reminding me of stories told to me fifty years ago by my lumberjack grandfather, so I had no difficulty accepting the magic realism elements. The author also does not force the reader to believe: the narrator admits "it is not hard to ascribe some meaning to [elements of nature like snow]" but "perhaps the snow was just snow." What bothered me is some of the events in the novel. Could a town be buried under 50 feet of snow for over seven months? Could so many people survive?

Despite the glowing reviews of many people, I found that this book just didn't "Touch" me. The characters all felt distant; I did not feel an emotional connection with any of them. ( )

very good first novel ( )

I loved this novel, the story told by Stephen, the grandson of Jeannot and the son of Pierre. Jeannot founded the town of Sawgamet, in the cold north woods of western Canada (BC? Alberta?), which became a mining and lumber town in the late 19th and early 20th century. Stephen shares the stories told to him by his father and by his grandfather, who returned to Sawgamut after 30+ years of unexplained absence, when Stephen was an 11-year-old boy. The stories are magical, heartbreaking, delightful, and expansive. The novel weaves fluidly between the past and the present. The present is, I think, sometime in the 1930s as the second great war expresses its demand for lumber and other resources, and Stephen is sitting beside his mother's deathbed. From this thoughtful vantage point, Stephen tells the stories of his family, stories that have been passed down, along with a very special axe, from generation to generation. Zentner's prose is spare and elegant; his descriptions of snow in all its beautiful and deadly varieties are a joy to read. The characters and scenes are vivid and rich.

Given how much I loved this novel, I'm not sure why I'm not giving it 5 stars. Perhaps I want to take the time to see if it stays with me as much as I expect it to. Highly recommended. ( )

"Touch" is an entrancing tale, hauntingly told, of three generations of the Boucher family and those that were intertwined with their lives.
The time span of the story takes place between sometime in the mid to later 1800's up until WW2. Though the wars play essentially no part in the book, they help to ground the timeline.

The story is crafted beautifully , almost poetically at times. It is most evocative. Touch also has the most startling and vivid word imagery. For a seamless read, I suggest creating a family tree of the characters early on in the story.

Touch is the most fascinating story I've read in some time. It can be a bit challenging to follow because though it is essentially told from the perspective of 40 year old Vancouverite Paul, the story very often goes off on a tangent timewise and narrator wise to Paul's father and grandfather and their memories and stories.

I won't recount the story, but I wanted to address the mention of the "supernatural " or "Grimms Fairy Tale" aspect of this book.

Though the element of magical realism is present, I found that it flowed most naturally in Touch. This element can be easily understood as a part of the hypothermia suffered by frontiers man Grandfather Jeannot or by the lonely imaginings that emerge from isolation of a long cold winter . The magical realism can also be taken at face value, or as part of the flawed memories or re-tellings of family memories which become a part of both a truth and a family mythology.

As grandfather Jeannot explains of he and his wife's isolation of winter on page 203 : " It was the sound during the those months... that was hard to get used to. At first they had the wind and and the pelting snow... but after a while even that disappeared, leaving them with a hush and ..imagined whisperings."

Though I am addressing the " magical realism " in the book , the story is very grounded too.

This is a beautiful,tragic ,quintessentially Canadian story. If it wins the Giller , which it longlisted for, I won't be be surprised. Though it is very Canadian, Touch will also be published in the US, Italy, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Israel, Korea and the UK. Read it!

5 stars. ( )

Zentner's debut finds Stephen Boucher, an Anglican minister, returned home to keep watch by his mother's deathbed. As Stephen waits for his mother's inevitable passing, he has many long hours to contemplate his past in Sawgamet and to reflect on how his and his family's lives are woven inextricably into the fabric of a place fraught with myth and mystery. From the moment Stephen's grandfather Jeannot is halted in his westward progress through the virgin territory of British Columbia by his dog Flaireur's refusal to go on any further, Sawgamet takes a firm hold of the Boucher clan.

Sawgamet is richly drawn, a coldly beautiful town filled with ghosts and the darkly magical, a character in its own right. In fact, the strength of this novel lies in Zentner's ability to imbue the gold rush town turned logging town into a place crawling with the mystical. It's easy to picture ghosts, some well-meaning most not, lurking in Zentner's frozen wilderness. Stephen's own memories of his childhood complete with a tragic accident and his grandfather's mysterious return after years of absence are melded with the stories he's always been told of his grandfather and grandmother, stories of impossible magic, burning chemistry, and unexplained treasure.

Stephen's memories ground the story in the realities of a logging town, filled with men carving out a living from the region's dangerous lumber industry. Try though he might, he can no longer cull the truth from the fiction, but the stories have taken on lives of their own, and it's the stories that make Touch soar. On the flip side, though, it sometimes seemed that the characters, who should be ultra-sympathetic, sometimes held the reader at arm's length. While I appreciated their stories, I rarely felt like I was fully involved with them.

Touch is one book that might very well benefit from one of those diagrams that map out the family tree that sometimes crop up within the first few pages of books. Perhaps with that, I would have wasted much less time and brain power trying to pin down who was related to who and could have dedicated myself to fully enjoying Zentner's tale, parts of which I'm sure went over my head while I was busy trying to figure out which character exactly Stephen's uncle was married to. Aside from my own obsessiveness about the family tree, though, Touch is a hauntingly beautiful tale filled with the elusive magic of storytelling. ( )

A piece of Canadian magic realism, incorporating Inuit mythology (with echoes of James Joyce's story "The Dead") into an otherwise realistic story about the settling of a gold mining/lumbering town in the Boreal Forest. Frankly, I found the use of the Inuit myths rather odd, given the town's location in the forest, south of the Arctic. The writing is assured, though action is reported rather than shown unfolding. In many ways, this piece resembles Thea Obreht's Tiger's Wife. (Indeed, Ms. Obreht is one of the blurbers on the back of the book). An okay read, but not one I found highly engaging. The characters all seemed rather distant and I'm not sure the Aboriginal slant really worked. I recommend that you borrow rather than buy. ( )

An interesting and different type of novel. Set in a small secluded town where stories and myths are shared among the villagers, and ghosts and supernatural creatures lurks in the woods. It's intriguing and gives off a "Brother's Grimm" type of feeling. ( )

This was a book I received to review. I am so glad I did. I read it within 2 days.
The book follows the story of a pastor returning to his hometown to be with his dying mother and to make the town his home again. He tells the stories he has heard from his family about the trials and tribulations of living in a gold mining town that went bust and then turned into a logging town. The story was told from different people (which made it difficult at times to follow and this is why I didn't give it 5 stars) and the effect the town and their actions had upon them. I loved the story and look forward to reading more from this author. ( )

Touch by Alexi Zentner – wonderfully evocative

This story is set in a “gold rush” town in north western Canada, and spans 3 generations, from late 19th C up to just before WW2. The plot has been very well covered in other reviews, so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say, that I found this book wonderfully evocative of life in a pre-technology era, when people believed in spirits, and when whole communities were at the mercy of the weather (imagine being buried under 30ft of snow for months on end!

I thought the writing was wonderfully assured for a first novel. Descriptions are just fantastic – you can really imagine the miner’s cabins, and the river, and the logs being floated downriver to be sold ... and the snow, the endless and all pervading snow.

The story also has a magical / fantastical element, where supernatural creatures appear and may threaten or help you, and dead people can be found if you look in the right place or in the right way.

Overall, I thought this was an enjoyable, interesting, and “genre-defying” read. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for something a little bit different. ( )

Touch meanders along at a steadfast but enchanting manner and slowly builds, layer by layer. It has an ethereal quality to it and the fantasy element works perfectly throughout. I loved all the mythical creatures - the shape shifters, fairies and witches - and I was captivated by the whole tale. I could imagine myself sitting beside the main character as he retold his family history through the tales he had learnt as a boy. Everything that Zentner describes is bought vividly to life and he doesn't waste one single word. This tale is a sentimental one but so much more - at times quite dark and gothic with a definite magical quality. I'll definitely be looking out for more by Zentner. ( )

Alexi Zentner's "Touch" follows Stephen Boucher, a middle aged priest, as he returns home to the town of Sawgamet in Northern Canada, to be with his mother in her final hours. During the long night with her, he recalls the stories of the three generations of his family and how their lives have intertwined. His grandfather, Jeannot, was an original settler/founder of the town, having come in search of gold. He ultimately found love, instead, but was not the type to be a settled family man. Stephen's father, abandoned by Jeannot, struggled to be the type of parent his own father could not be, yet found himself plagued by loss and hardship. The fates of these generations seem to be tangled up with the dark, cold forest setting of the book, making for an intriguing and heart-felt tale that is beautifully told. ( )

In Alexi Zentner’s atmospheric “Touch,” grandfather Jeannot returns to the village deep in the Canadian North woods when young Stephen nears his eleventh birthday, and begins to tell stories. Jeannot founded the village when the dog he was walking overland with got too tired to go on, and settled down to sleep. The stories he tells Stephen flow from two traditions, the tall tale and the fairy tale. They do not spare the frank and deadly detail, nor the outrageous misbehavior, nor the vengeance served cold.

Stephen’s birth comes at a time when he’s too young for World War I and too old for World War II. Thus can his grandfather have founded a boom town in the harsh and unforgiving Canadian taiga. But can the other things his grandfather tells him be true? He says he has encountered a number of evil spirits in the forest and survived them. He survived a winter in a sawmill with his pregnant wife when the snow started in mid-fall and only let up in July. What he did to survive the winter there, and the ghastly retribution flowing from it forms the crux of the story.

Mr. Zentner in his debut shows strong promise in handling the geography of the primeval forest and of the larger-than-life characters that populate this story. The fairy tale aspect is never far from the surface narrative, and pops up at unexpected times. The stories are told by the characters, whose presence we barely notice. It could be Grandpa Jeannot telling the story to Stephen, or Stephen telling the stories in turn to his daughters. All these features of the story tell of Mr. Zentner’s skill and ambition in his first novel. Both are considerable.

An atmospheric story with extreme conditions of snow, river, forest, and fire, and extreme conditions of human survival, which bring out the best and worst in the human beings and the non-human beings, “Touch” presses deeply into our memories and consciousnesses. The style is perfect for the subject matter, and suspending our disbelief rewards us generously here. Take it up if you’re ready for a good, well-told fantasy.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2011/05/touch-by-alexi-zentner.html ( )

beautifully written, with the frigid air and weather as a main character. zentner's language evokes a terrific sense of time and place. the flashback aspect bothered me a bit but that's a personal thing. highly recommend. ( )