by Jeremy Page
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Dec 2013
384 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
The worlds of ocean and ice were meeting in a frontier of rage, as if the Earth had torn in two along this line. This was a place, if there ever was a place, where you could disappear ...
The year is 1845 and young researcher Eliot Saxby is paid to go on an expedition to the Arctic in the hope of finding remains of the by-now-extinct Great Auk, a large flightless bird of mythical status.
Eliot joins a hunting ship, but the crew and the passengers are not what they seem. Caught in the web of relationships on board, Eliot struggles to understand the motivations of the sociopathic Captain Sykes; the silent First Mate, French; the flamboyant laudanum-addicted Bletchley; and most importantly of all, Bletchley's beautiful but strange 'cousin' Clara.
As the ship moves further and further into the wilds of the Arctic Sea, Eliot clings to what he believes in, desperate to save Clara but irrevocably drawn back into a past that haunts him - and a present that confronts him with a myriad of dangers.
"Starred Review. Page shapes a fascinating historical narrative and has moving insights into our sometimes-dubious relationship to the natural world." - Kirkus
"Gorgeous in the telling and heartbreaking in its message, Salt is truly a book to savor." - The Hartford Courant
"Page writes with feeling and intimacy, his touch is poetic and sure. The novel's sense of the natural world is fine and compelling. A powerful vision." - The Guardian
"Gripping...buoyant." - Time Out New York
This information about The Collector of Lost Things was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jeremy Page has worked as a script editor and writer for FilmFour and the BBC. He has published two previous novels: Salt and Sea Change. Page lives in London.
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