Inland by Tea Obreht

August 14, 2019

Inland by Tea Obreht

Orphaned at a young age and wanted for murder in Missouri Territory in 1856, Lurie stumbles upon a shipment of camels being brought to Arizona Territory by the U.S. Army intending to test their use as pack animals in desert areas.  He becomes a cameleer, forming a bond with one particular camel he calls Burke.  Forty years later, Nora Lark and her family are living in the middle of a drought in Arizona Territory.  Nora’s husband, who runs the local newspaper, left the ranch eight days earlier in search of water and hasn’t been heard from since.  Her older sons have gone off to find their father, leaving Nora alone at the ranch with her youngest son, her invalid mother-in-law, and her husband’s cousin who holds seances – even the homestead dogs have disappeared.  Their stories finally intersect in an unexpected way.  Recommended for readers who enjoyed Toni Morrison’s Beloved or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Tea Obreht writes lush, beautiful prose, and I had been looking forward to reading Inland, but the pace is really slow, plus there are many characters and it takes quite a while to get into the story.  Told from two viewpoints (Lurie and Nora), their stories don’t intersect until the last quarter of the book.  Lurie’s story is fairly linear and contains a good amount of action, while Nora’s story is more stagnant but jumps around a lot in time.  There is a feeling of dread that underlies the text, like the oppressive heat and drought in the Arizona desert.  A number of characters in the book are communicating with the dead or might be dead themselves (not sure how much this element adds to the story).  Certain aspects of the plot come together very late in the last quarter of the book, when a character that has been mentioned frequently (essentially the town bogeyman) finally appears and explains or confirms what has been hinted at throughout the book.  The ending felt rushed, with Nora foreseeing the future after taking a drink of “magic” water.  While other readers may have enjoyed Inland, I was disappointed.