4 out of 5

‘North’ is a compellingly layered tale that weaves its way through the end of a marriage, but does so in such a way as to underline the blend of tragedy and discovery that often batters us in life, ending chapters and beginning new ones at the same moment.  Sloss deftly steps back from too many overt surges of emotion to keep the narration moving forward, and seemingly subverts formula by revealing to us, on the first page, the death of a main character – the narrator’s father – but then rewinds and plays the necessary pieces prior to this point to expose the core of the tale in the relationship between father and mother, parents and offspring, and the desires that maybe drive these characters.  If I can be awesome and draw the ridiculous comparison to the recent Atomic Robo arc, this is Sloss playing a similar trick with her narration as Brian Clevinger did by telling us a distracting detail up front: having already had the structural norm flip-flopped, we might be expecting the story to lead up to some revelation regarding that detail, making us eagerly study the text for bits we’re sure tie to that introduction.  And it’s not a complete fake-out, as ‘North’ absolutely gives us the slow, plodding obsession that builds to one man’s need to do a balloon trip to the North Pole, and it’s clear that that’s where he’ll meet his end.  But, as mentioned, this is handled delicately so as to keep this tragedy at bay, and drill down into the shifts in dynamic between husband and wife that happen over the development of this obsession.

There’s a lot I truly enjoyed about ‘North,’ which is of a more straight dramatic genre than I would’ve casually plucked from a shelf.  The tale is written from something of a distance for the most part (indeed, the narrator is a couple levels removed), which makes it much easier to believe in the mix of coldness and acceptance that’s prevalent in the family.  With this in mind, the text occasionally crosses from a dry detailing or telling into language that’s a bit more poetic, especially toward the story’s start when it’s trying to find its pace; at those points I would realize I was reading a story.  Not the world’s greatest sin at all, especially given the compact effectiveness of the tale otherwise, but I’m writing a review so nitpicking is why I’m here.