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    Touch
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    Touch
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    Touch
    Audiobook7 hours

    Touch

    Written by Alexi Zentner

    Narrated by Norman Dietz

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In Sawgamet, a north woods boomtown gone bust, the cold of winter breaks the glass of the schoolhouse thermometer, and the dangers of working in the cuts are overshadowed by the mysteries and magic lurking in the woods. Stephen, a pastor, is at home on the eve of his mother's funeral, thirty years after the mythic summer his grandfather returned to the town in search of his beloved but long-dead wife. And like his grandfather, Stephen is forced to confront the losses of his past. Touch introduces you to a world where monsters and witches oppose singing dogs and golden caribou, where the living and the dead part and meet again in the crippling beauty of winter and the surreal haze of summer.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateApr 4, 2011
    ISBN9781611201208
    Unavailable
    Touch

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    Reviews for Touch

    4/5

    122 ratings28 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Soooo good! Reminds me of Three Day Road and the first third of John Irvings latest....cannot believe this is a first novel!
    • 4/5


      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Such a refreshing and different story, a magical way of interpreting life's events. I loved this book.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      very good first novel
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      "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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      This debut novel is both remarkable and different. We join Stephen, a middle aged priest, as he returns to the small logging town of Sawgamet because his mother is dying. As she nears death, he recalls the stories of three generations who have lived and, in many cases, not survived the harsh winters that beset the far northern reaches of Canada. The tales he remembers are beautifully told and so vivid that you almost feel yourself there amongst them. However, all is not what it seems, and amid the forests and the river are shape shifters, fairies and magic....not all of it benevolent!Now I have to admit that this is not my normal choice of reading. Fantasy is just not my thing. Yet somehow, Alexi Zentner has seamlessly woven the harsh realities of life with this underlying acceptance of things not quite being as simple as one would expect in such a hard working, cruel environment.The first third of the book does chop and change a great deal and swaps from one generation to another within very short paragraphs. I can see this being difficult for some readers and all I can say is not to be put off by this. All comes together at the very moving end of the novel and the chopping and changing was for a very good reason.The author has a magical way with words and I was there with Stephen on the eve of his mother's funeral, in the very early hours of the morning, as he tries to make sense of it all. I loved it and this book deserves to be read....it demands to be read. So what are you waiting for? This book was made available to me, prior to publication, for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      I just finished reading an ARC of this book. Truly, it blew me away There's an element of magical realism, as if Gabriel Garcia Marquez had found himself transplanted to British Columbia. The writing is just beautiful. There are some scenes, one in particular, that I just can't stop thinking about. It's kind of a shame that it comes out in April, because I can't quite imagine reading this book on a lovely spring day. It's a book about finding human warmth and tenderness in a harsh, cold environment. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Stephen Boucher, the soon to be pastor of a church inn Sawgamet, has come home to this town to be with his mother as she passes into the next life. During his last night with her he remembers the events that have shattered his life, and the lives of those who live and work in this north woods town. As the night progresses Stephen introduces us to three generations of the Boucher family. His grandfather, Jeannot, came here to find his fortune in gold, but found love instead. His father who abandoned by Jeannot as a baby, strives to be everything to his children that his father was not, and loses everything in the process. This is a story of freezing cold, staggering heat, bitter truths, creatures from imaginations brought to life, and a love that will not be broken by death. Beyond that it's a beautiful book that dares you to try to put it down.
    • 5/5
      Alexi Zentner's debut novel, "Touch," is nothing short of a masterpiece. At a recent event at Powell's Books in Portland, OR the author described the book as "magical realism." Whatever he chooses to call it, I hail it as wonderful.The story is centered around the town of Sawgamet, a north country town that has seen better times. Zentner focuses on the family of Stephen Boucher who returns to the town to say goodbye to his dying mother. The novel mingles this farewell with the tale of Stephen's grandfather, the mysterious Jeannot, who returns years after his wife's death to "raise the dead." The debut author's sense of place recalls other more seasoned authors such as Ron Rash and William Trevor. His ability to combine fantasy and realism is alluring and convincing. Readers will be enchanted by this ability and by the story of enduring love of people and place.
    • 4/5
      What beautiful, evocative writing we have here from this brand new author. At first, it seems like another in the "genre" of a fictional looking back on your life type book. And it is -- a recollection of boyhood and family history in a cold Canadian mining town. Beautiful, lyrical language.There's another aspect here too -- superstition, creatures from the woods, sightings of strange mythical creatures. This isn't as much my cup of tea, but it's brilliantly handled by the author, never really getting into the discussion of whether or not these things are actually real or not....or just superstition from a people clear-cutting the forest. Series of events that are unexplainable are explained by the townspeople through these myths, but you as the reader don't necessarily have to buy into it as truth. Very well done, and not overdone.I must say, I look forward to more by this new author. He has a way with words that is just glorious.
    • 4/5
      "Touch" is the story of the history of a small logging town and the families that make their homes there. The story is narrated by Stephen, who is a third generation inhabitant. He as returned to the town to take over as the town pastor after living away from the town for the majority of his adulthood. His arrival happens to coincide with his mother becoming acutely ill and dying and he is narrating the story to the reader the night before her funeral. If that isn't enough plot for you, there are many other surprises. The story centers around the town of Sawgamet and its inhabitants, which primarily consist of Stephen's immediate family. The founder of the town, Jacques, is Stephen's grandfather. Stephen recalls in the story the day that Jacques returned to town after disappearing for many years to find his deceased wife. His claim was that she still lived in the magical forest that surrounded the town. At first glance, that claim seems unlikely, but in the story we also encounter river demons, singing dogs, golden caribou, and cannabalism victims coming back to wreak revenge. Suddenly, someone living on after their deaths in the woods becomes more likely. .This story is a very complex and multi layered work of literature, where the magical interweaves with the darkly real. This creates a novel that's part "One Hundred Years of Solitude," part Brothers Grimm and has a small amount of wilderness taming adventure thrown in. Would definitely recommend. I already have many people asking to borrow my Early Reviewers copy, and I definitely recommend you go out and read this book.
    • 5/5
      I loved this story! It was mystical, mysterious, and historical. Touch is the intricate telling of a family - through 3 generations - and the buidling of a lumber town. The hearts of the men and women in this story are true and drive their actions, sometimes with success, other times with painful regret afterwards. The tradition of storytelling drives the narrator of this book to tell us and his children about his ancestors. This book is beautifully and poignantly written. I feel privileged to read this as part of the Early Reviewers program.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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!
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 1/5
      It's funny, I usually start out my reviews with a short little blurb of my own just rehashing the particulars of the story. With 'Touch' though, this story was so all over the place that I can't adequately explain it's basis; it simply eludes me. The official summary feels deceiving and makes it sound ripe with potential... but it never lived up it, that's for sure. I truly feel as if I've been hoodwinked. I blame the stunning cover! *shakes fist* But honestly, I recall going through this magical realism stage and added practically every book tagged as such. This is one of them. I'm thinking that if the author isn't Sarah Addison Allen, then I apparently don't care much for magical realism. It should be said that according to the Reading Group Discussion questions (yeah, I read them in hopes that it would clarify some things. I was wrong) this is considered more along the lines of mythical realism as it incorporates Inuit mythology. While I could say that the incorporation of mythological elements may give it a smidgen of credibility in comparison to strange magical stuff happening for no apparent reason, it was a poorly managed addition to the story. The story is centered around this small town in the Canadian wilderness which came into existence only after gold was discovered. It's a story about survival. But then out of nowhere some strange creature would pop up and it was like mental whiplash. Like the mahaha (actual creatures name, I wasn't just laughing):"They tickle you until all your breath is gone. Leave you dead, but with a smile."Holy freaky shit. That's the stuff of nightmares. But I was intrigued and wanted to know more so I googled this scary beasty with the funny name. The page I found described the mahaha in basically the exact same way the author did in the book. Like it was copied. And that kind of killed the cool out of it. To me, magical realism IS the story, it's incorporated and intertwined into the very fabric of the story. But all the magical elements in Touch felt like a strange and ill-fitting addition that was added as an afterthought to an otherwise contemporary tale of survival. The writing style itself, apart from the actual story, was lacking a much needed finesse. The tale was not linear and bounced all over the place without any indication as to whether we were back in the present tense or still being told the story of the past. The point of view was a poor choice as well. The grandson is the narrator retelling his grandfather's story. Why not just have the grandfather tell his own story? Even though the grandfather told him his story it seemed unlikely that he would know as many details as he did. There were also strange leaps to other characters and telling the story through there eyes which definitely made it implausible as his grandfather wasn't even present in those instances. While the writing reflected definite potential, it was too unpolished for me to enjoy. I can't remember the last time (if ever) I finished a novel and honestly had absolutely no clue the purpose or meaning of it. So much of this story was too farcical in its inconceivability for me to garner any sort of entertainment. Many people have lauded this book for it's eerie, haunting qualities but ultimately this left me chilled for all the wrong reasons.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Touch by Alexi Zentner – wonderfully evocativeThis 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.