“The hole, a broken star on the ice, was the only interruption on the white plain merging into the white sky.  No wind, no life, no sound.”

Thus begins Hernan Diaz’s novel In the Distance, an abrasively raw and sweeping tale of one man’s search for a place in the world. This global story commences in the famine-stricken northern Sweden of the mid-1800’s, unfolds in the American West of the gold rush era, and concludes on an icy strait near the Arctic. Profoundly unromantic, it prods the impacting intersection of lives, of nature and man, and of the present with the future.

The family has little, but Håkan is nourished by the dreams of his older brother, Linus. The robust tales of New York are especially thrilling, and when their determined father sends them off to journey as immigrants, they aim for this new city. It isn’t long before Håkan is accidentally separated from Linus and finds himself on a boat bound for San Francisco. Penniless and limited linguistically, he is determined to embark on a trek towards a storied New York in search of his brother.

This dream fuelled trek leads Håkan throughout Western America and into the lives of strikingly different individuals…an Irish family in search of promised gold, a small, dusty western town’s controlling Madame, a naturalist seeking to understand life’s beginnings, Indians and their healing arts, fearful members of a wagon train, abusive religious fanatics, a caring cowboy, a welcoming shipping captain, a curious listening boy.

Some bring joy and intimacy … “to be seen, to be in someone’s brain“. Others thrust upon Håkan violence, loss, falsehoods, and fears that lead to the self-awareness that “nothing – not the countless footsteps taken or knowledge acquired, nor the adversaries bested or the friends made, not the love felt or the blood shed – had made it [this land] his.“

How does one plan and work towards a future when all around only encourages surviving the constant presence? Where lies hope when the brutal vastness of the wilderness overcomes the intricate beauty of its minute parts? How does one make sense of all that is foreign to the understood past and beyond logical comprehension? 

In the Distance is not only a coming-of-age tale, but it is also an immigrant’s story – a narrative of discovery that “nothing left behind in the wilderness could be retrieved. Every encounter was final. Nobody came back from beyond the horizon.”  At the end, Håkan recognizes that “his preference for silence had nothing to do with language …This quiet, hesitant being was simply who he was or had become.”

Diaz’s novel vividly paints with words what Shaun Tan depicts in his wordless graphic novel The Arrival. The haunting confusion, the profound loneliness, and the slowly fading hope-filled dream weave together and colour one young man’s deep and desperate yearning for “home”.

Mary, April 2019

Photo by Shawn Ang on Unsplash

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