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Audible sample Sample
Celine Audio CD – January 1, 2017
Working out of her jewel box of an apartment at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, Celine has made a career of tracking down missing persons, and she has a better record at it than the FBI. But when a young woman, Gabriela, asks for her help, a world of mystery and sorrow opens up. Gabriela's father was a photographer who went missing on the border of Montana and Wyoming. He was assumed to have died from a grizzly mauling, but his body was never found. Now, as Celine and her partner head to Yellowstone National Park, investigating a trail gone cold, it becomes clear that they are being followed--that this is a case someone desperately wants to keep closed.
Combining the exquisite plotting and gorgeous evocation of nature that have become his hallmark, with a wildly engrossing story of family, privilege, and childhood loss, Peter Heller gives us his finest work to date.
- Print length12 pages
- PublisherBooks on Tape
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2017
- ISBN-101524751065
- ISBN-13978-1524751067
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Product details
- Publisher : Books on Tape (January 1, 2017)
- Audio CD : 12 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1524751065
- ISBN-13 : 978-1524751067
- Best Sellers Rank: #10,333,725 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #105,284 in Women Sleuths (Books)
- #117,225 in Books on CD
- #183,782 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Peter Heller is a longtime contributor to NPR, a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and Men's Journal, and a frequent contributor to Businessweek. He is an award winning adventure writer and the author of four books of literary nonfiction. He lives in Denver. Heller was born and raised in New York. He attended high school in Vermont and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where he became an outdoorsman and whitewater kayaker. He traveled the world as an expedition kayaker, writing about challenging descents in the Pamirs, the Tien Shan mountains, the Caucuses, Central America and Peru.At the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received an MFA in fiction and poetry, he won a Michener fellowship for his epic poem "The Psalms of Malvine." He has worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, logger, offshore fisherman, kayak instructor, river guide, and world class pizza deliverer. Some of these stories can be found in Set Free in China, Sojourns on the Edge. In the winter of 2002 he joined, on the ground team, the most ambitious whitewater expedition in history as it made its way through the treacherous Tsangpo Gorge in Eastern Tibet. He chronicled what has been called The Last Great Adventure Prize for Outside, and in his book Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River.
The gorge -- three times deeper than the Grand Canyon -- is sacred to Buddhists, and is the inspiration for James Hilton's Shangri La. It is so deep there are tigers and leopards in the bottom and raging 25,000 foot peaks at the top, and so remote and difficult to traverse that a mythical waterfall, sought by explorers since Victorian times, was documented for the first time in 1998 by a team from National Geographic.
The book won a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, was number three on Entertainment Weekly's "Must List" of all pop culture, and a Denver Post review ranked it "up there with any adventure writing ever written."
In December, 2005, on assignment for National Geographic Adventure, he joined the crew of an eco-pirate ship belonging to the radical environmental group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as it sailed to Antarctica to hunt down and disrupt the Japanese whaling fleet.
The ship is all black, sails under a jolly Roger, and two days south of Tasmania the engineers came on deck and welded a big blade called the Can Opener to the bow--a weapon designed to gut the hulls of ships. In The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals, Heller recounts fierce gales, forty foot seas, rammings, near-sinkings, and a committed crew's clear-eyed willingness to die to save a whale. The book was published by Simon and Schuster's Free Press in September, 2007.
In the fall of 2007 Heller was invited by the team who made the acclaimed film The Cove to accompany them in a clandestine filming mission into the guarded dolphin-killing cove in Taiji, Japan. Heller paddled into the inlet with four other surfers while a pod of pilot whales was being slaughtered. He was outfitted with a helmet cam, and the terrible footage can be seen in the movie. The Cove went on to win an Academy Award. Heller wrote about the experience for Men's Journal.
Heller's most recent memoir, about surfing from California down the coast of Mexico, Kook: What Surfing Taught Me about Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, was published by The Free Press in 2010. Can a man drop everything in the middle of his life, pick up a surfboard and, apprenticing himself to local masters, learn to ride a big, fast wave in six months? Can he learn to finally love and commit to someone else? Can he care for the oceans, which are in crisis? The answers are in. The book won a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, which called it a "powerful memoir...about love: of a woman, of living, of the sea." It also won the National Outdoor Book Award for Literature.
Heller's debut novel, The Dog Stars, is being published by Knopf in August, 2012. It will also be published by Headline Review in Great Britain and Australia, and Actes Sud in France.
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I only read a couple of sentences of The Painter - not sure why - and so I came to Celine a little bit anxious and a whole lot hopeful. I'm delighted to say that hopeful was the way to go, because this book kept me turning pages late into the night, made me laugh and cry, offered new perspectives on people and places without losing legitimacy, and - most wonderful of all - made me want to be a better person. A more direct and elegant person. A person who doesn't let fear lead the way. And yet, someone deeply capable of living and being loved. Celine, the protagonist, is a knockout combination of brilliant investigating, ace shooting, and sublime care for those she encounters. She knows how to stir it up (and I mean seriously - any senior citizen who wears a Glock under her robe at a campsite is not messing around) but is never anything but the most dignified of ladies. I loved it.
The story involves the death (or disappearance?) of a talented photographer who left behind his teen daughter - a young woman who had already lost her mother as a child during a horrific accident at sea. The daughter, now grown, has doubts about the outcome of the case, and takes them to Celine, whom she had read about in their alma mater's magazine. Excellent investigating, car chases, sudden appearances by various wild animals, and a number of shots fired ensue as Celine and her very Maine husband, Pete, head west to unravel the mysteries of the man's death. Heller threads a second set of storylines, about Celine's own losses, throughout the novel, a tactic which can often be distracting but, in this case, actually makes the book richer and more meaningful. Bravo!
Heller is an immensely gifted storyteller and artist. I especially appreciate the emotional depths of his characters. No stereotyping or blasé asides here: the characters could easily rise from the page and then walk away. Pete might do it with a whistle.
The good: Peter Heller is a top-notch wordslinger. His descriptions of people and places are fresh and original. They resonate. I can sink into them; suddenly, I'm outside Celine's house on the East River in Brooklyn, I'm in the mountains of Montana just as fall arrives, I'm in the biker bar. His descriptions are so pure and authentic. Just the right words, and no extras. Same with his characters. They're original and fascinating. His knowledge of the world impressed me. It informs the story. Heller is either involved in everything (painting, shooting, fly fishing, overthrowing Latin American governments...) or simply erudite.
The bad: a very slow start, which I confess I failed to pay enough attention to (ending a sentence with a preposition reminds me of a funny conversation in the story, but never mind.) It's a lot of backstory and character development, and until I got to the very end of the book I didn't think I'd need it, but now I think it might have been more important. Rats. The action only got going at about the 2/3 point. So if you're planning to read this novel, don't be in a big fat hurry.
Also, and I've picked this bone before, I don't buy the trick/device of Heller's signature one word sentence (Well.) And now it has a new sibling (But.) Sometimes they appear together. (But. Well. / Well. But.) This feels to me like an affectation, it's annoying, it's overdone. Mr. Heller, please stop. If you can't go cold turkey, try to cut back.
And the point of view drifts. Sometimes we'll be in Celine's head, and she'll get done with a thought, and then the narrative voice steps in and caps it off with an observation. And I'm thinking, who just said that? It takes you out of the story a bit, even if it is a personable narrative voice. Like there's another character we're supposed to know, but can't quite grasp. This feels to me as if the author can't bear to sit on the sidelines. I get that, but it distracts.
What offsets a lot of the above negativity is the depiction of these two older people. They're so impressive. Like MacGyver impressive. Or Sheldon Horowitz impressive, from the novel Norwegian by Night, by Derek B. Miller. They inform the experience of aging by showing us a way--albeit superhero way--of living a full second half of life. Giving each other space. Having the confidence to live together and love fiercely without losing oneself in the process. Being mindful in the moment, savoring the details, having the maturity to know what's important. Being fearless, as is Celine. God, the scene in the biker bar...I'll reread that a few more times just to savor. She's such a Samurai.
Celine is a fine book by a standout author. In spite of my confusion (and allowing for the possibility that he's a better writer than I am a reader), the novel is well worth your time, and I recommend it.