Polar Vortex
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Some secrets never die…
Priya and Alexandra have moved from the city to a picturesque countryside town. What Alex doesn't know is that in moving, Priya is running from her past—from a fraught relationship with an old friend, Prakash, who pursued her for many years, both online and off. Time has passed, however, and Priya, confident that her ties to Prakash have been successfully severed, decides it's once more safe to establish an online presence. In no time, Prakash discovers Priya online and contacts her. Impulsively, inexplicably, Priya invites him to visit her and Alex in the country, without ever having come clean with Alex about their relationship—or its tumultuous end. Prakash's sudden arrival at their home reveals cracks in Priya and Alex's relationship and brings into question Priya's true intentions.
Seductive and tension-filled, Polar Vortex is a story of secrets, deceptions, and revenge. It asks readers: Are we ever free from our pasts? Do we deserve to be?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mootoo (Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab) serves up a slow-burning examination of identity, gender, desire, and immigration through the relationship of an older lesbian couple living on a small tourist island in Canada. Priya, an artist and Indian raised in Trinidad, narrates most of the novel while she and her girlfriend, Alex, await the arrival of Priya's longtime friend Prakash, an Indian man whose family fled Idi Amin's regime in Uganda. Priya and Alex had moved from Toronto to the rural island to concentrate on their creative work, but the mostly white setting makes Priya feel out of place. Prakash, meanwhile, had pursued Priya for years even though he was married with children and Priya was dating women. As Priya goes through the day, memories of her past drift in and out as she questions her troubled relationship with Prakesh, and Prakesh's imminent arrival puts a strain on Priya's relationship with Alex. The precise prose outlines the factures of trust and Priya's temptations, as Priya struggles with the differences between Alex and Prakash in relation to her feelings as an immigrant. Mootoo's subtle, thought-provoking tale stands out among stories of characters gripped by the past.
