Review: West
Gaby Meares
I came to read West after reading Davies most recent book, [b:Clear|176443690|Clear|Carys Davies|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1686502013l/176443690.SY75.jpg|183066038], which I loved.
This is a compact book (149 pages) but Davies has packed it with emotions: grief, loneliness, greed, lust, and a man’s yearning to discover giant monsters in the unchartered wilderness beyond the Mississippi River.
Widower, Cy Bellman, leaves behind his ten year old daughter Bess in the care of his taciturn sister to follow his dream. We follow Cy as he faces the rigours of brutal winters and starvation, and Bess as she matures and faces her own dangers. She is lonely and vulnerable, following her father’s route on maps in the local ‘subscription’ library (obviously this town hadn’t a Carnegie Library).
It’s hard to convey in a few short sentences the power of the emotions portrayed in this slim volume. The sense of the great unknown, ‘where there be monsters’, is palpable. In our modern world of google maps it’s easy to forget how terrifying it must have been and how some men couldn’t resist the lure of the unknown.