Book Review: The Sun Makes A Sound, by Andy Whitman

Reviewed by Toby A. Welch

Andy Whitman’s debut novel The Sun Makes A Sound opens with immediate tension. Mason Brigster-Contreras jolts awake in his tent to a threatening noise he fears is a polar bear. That moment sets the pace for a story that follows a man navigating both an unforgiving northern landscape and the weight of his past.

Set largely in Nunavut’s Kivalliq Region — a stretch of tundra roughly 2,000 kilometres northeast of Edmonton — the novel uses the stark environment as more than backdrop. Whitman writes the terrain with such precision that the land becomes a character of its own. While much of the narrative unfolds in the North, chapters also shift to Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto. Nature is a constant presence, from wildfires to wildlife to the extremes of seasonal change.

Whitman, a Regina-based environmental scientist, brings a clear and vivid style to the page. His descriptions are sharp, often visceral. A noise might be likened to “pantyhose rubbing against corduroy,” while a character recovering from a fall wonders if he is “only a husk,” before feeling “a bag of rabid weasels” thrashing in his head. Such imagery is characteristic of a writer able to translate physical sensation and emotional tension into memorable prose.

Although Amazon lists the novel as literary thriller, literary fiction and fantasy, it also reads as an environmental thriller, shaped by Whitman’s real-world experience cleaning up environmental messes. Before this first novel, he spent 14 years publishing short fiction, poetry and non-fiction under a pseudonym.

The Sun Makes A Sound offers a vivid blend of place, character and atmosphere. Readers seeking a layered northern tale with strong descriptive writing will find much to appreciate.

This book is available at your local bookstore or from skbooks.com.