Summary
Summary
Edith grows up in her big sister Vivienne's shadow. While the beautiful Viv is forced by the girls' overbearing mother to compete in child beauty pageants, plain-looking Edith follows in her father's footsteps: collecting oddities, studying coins, and reading from old books.
When Viv rebels against her mother's expectations, Edith finds herself torn between a desire to help her sister and pursuing her own love for a boy who might love her sister more than he loves her. When Edith accepts a job at the National Gallery of Canada, she meets an elderly cryptozoologist named Theo who is searching for a bird many believe to be extinct. Navigating her way through Vivienne's dark landscape while trying to win Liam's heart, Edith develops an unlikely friendship with Theo when she realizes they might have more in common than she imagined; they are both trying to retrieve something that may be impossible to bring back to life.
Nina Berkhout's The Gallery of Lost Species is about finding solace in unexpected places - in works of art, in people, and in animals that the world has forgotten.
Author Notes
NINA BERKHOUT is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Elseworlds , which received the 2013 Archibald Lampman Award for the year's best poetry. Her earlier work has been shortlisted for THIS magazine's Great Canadian Literary Hunt, The Archibald Lampman Award, and the John Hirsch Award. Originally from Alberta, she now resides in Ontario, where she works at the National Gallery of Canada.
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Berkhout, the author of five poetry collections (including Elseworlds, winner of the 2013 Archibald Lampman Award), has written a dark debut novel about family responsibilities and unmet expectations. Edith Walker is a 13-year-old girl who lives in the shadow of her older sister, Vivienne, who's pushed into beauty pageants by a mother living out her own fantasies. As both girls grow up, Vivienne rebels against the expectations of her parents and becomes a talented artist, but also becomes lost in addictions. Witnessing her sister's downward spiral and the disintegration of their dysfunctional family, Edith shifts from envying Vivienne to trying to save her and find her when she disappears. Somehow, Edith has to develop her own sense of self in the midst of it all. Edith finds work at the National Galley of Canada in Ottawa, where much of the action takes place. The novel, a love letter to its Ottawa setting, treads between sprawling national structures and the haunts of the homeless. Berkhout's secondary characters lack development, and she occasionally advances plot by having Edith behave in a way that seems inconsistent with the character the reader has come to know. Nevertheless, this quiet debut is an admirable portrait of a young woman searching for the lost and the mythic. Agents: Samantha Haywood and Stephanie Sinclair, TransAtlantic. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.