Review of Adrift

Adrift by Lisa Brideau

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I ordered this book on the recommendation of author Michael Mammay. I'm glad I did, as I found it an interesting read.

The novel, a debut from author Lisa Brideau, opens with a woman waking up on a sailboat. She's in a remote part British Colombia, which as a non-Canadian took me a bit to figure out. She has no memory and there is a note taped to a table. "This is the only way out alive." The story then becomes one of how our narrator, who finds identification with the name Sarah Jane Song, goes about discovering who she is. It's also a story of discovering her world, which is ours, except a decade or so on and being ravaged by climate change.

This novel is difficult to summarize because it is a mystery with an uninformed if not unreliable narrator. I also found the ending a bit unsatisfying. After some thought, I decided that the author did what she set out to do - it's just not what I would have done. In any event, a powerful debut.



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