Polar Vortex

by Shani Mootoo

Overview

A novel reminiscent of the works of Herman Koch and Rachel Cusk, in which a lesbian couple attempts to escape the secrets of their pasts.

“[Mootoo’s] unsettling latest examines how secrets always come back to haunt us—especially the ones we’ve managed to keep from ourselves.” —Globe & Mail, one of the 100 Favorite Books of 2020

One of Autostraddle‘s Best Queer Books of 2020

Polar Vortex is a seductive and tension-filled novel about Priya and Alex, a lesbian couple who left the big city to relocate to a bucolic countryside community. It seemed like a good way to leave their past behind and cement their newish, later-in-life relationship. But there’s leaving the past behind—and then there’s running away from awkward histories.

Priya has a secret—a long-standing on-again, off-again relationship with a man, Prakash. In Priya’s mind Prakash is little more than an old friend, but in reality things are a bit complicated. Why has she never told Alex about him? Prakash has tracked Priya down in her new life, and before she realizes what she’s doing, she invites him to visit.

Alex is not pleased, and soon the existing cracks in their relationship widen, revealing secrets Alex herself would have preferred to keep. Into the fissure walks Prakash, whose own agenda forces all three to face the inevitable consequences of their choices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617758621
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	576,967
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

SHANI MOOTOO is a novelist, poet, and visual artist. Her novels include Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award; Valmiki’s Daughter, long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; He Drown She in the Sea, long-listed for the Dublin Impac Award; and Cereus Blooms at Night, short-listed for several prizes including the Giller Prize, and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. She is also a recipient of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship and the Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Her latest novel is Polar Vortex.

Editorial Reviews

07/27/2020

Mootoo (Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab) serves up a slow-burning examination of identity, gender, desire, and immigration through the relationship of an older lesbian couple living on a small tourist island in Canada. Priya, an artist and Indian raised in Trinidad, narrates most of the novel while she and her girlfriend, Alex, await the arrival of Priya’s longtime friend Prakash, an Indian man whose family fled Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda. Priya and Alex had moved from Toronto to the rural island to concentrate on their creative work, but the mostly white setting makes Priya feel out of place. Prakash, meanwhile, had pursued Priya for years even though he was married with children and Priya was dating women. As Priya goes through the day, memories of her past drift in and out as she questions her troubled relationship with Prakesh, and Prakesh’s imminent arrival puts a strain on Priya’s relationship with Alex. The precise prose outlines the factures of trust and Priya’s temptations, as Priya struggles with the differences between Alex and Prakash in relation to her feelings as an immigrant. Mootoo’s subtle, thought-provoking tale stands out among stories of characters gripped by the past. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Shani Mootoo is one of the towering lesbian novelists of our time . . . Polar Vortex [is] a jewel in an already extraordinary creative life. Mootoo’s powerful capacity capture of people and their inner vulnerabilities and longings in her novels make them compelling reads."

Autostraddle

"The action is dramatic, but it could only be surprising to someone who hasn’t noticed the accumulation of clues. There is violence and betrayal, but the characters are so sympathetically drawn that no one emerges as a villain or a stereotype . . . The structuring of the plot as a series of scenes gives this novel a steady momentum. Polar Vortex is a cautionary tale for adults."

The Gay & Lesbian Review

2020-07-01
Will an old lover's revelations disrupt an apparently secure lesbian couple?

Artist Priya has moved to the Canadian countryside to make a new life with Alex, her lover, a writer. But a visit from Prakash, a male college friend, threatens to expose secrets from her young adulthood she hasn’t shared. After Prakash gets in touch with her after many years and Priya invites him to visit, she begins having nightmares, fearful that Prakash’s revelations could destroy her relationship. Priya’s short chapters of first-person narration attenuate the suspense as Alex, attuned to Priya’s unease, ferrets out facts and asks more probing questions. Photographs from college show Priya and her roommate, Fiona, together with Prakash. Priya, who’s never told Alex that Fiona was her lover, finesses questions on that subject. Nor has Alex, who at one point asks whether Prakash is homophobic, guessed the deeper secret: That Priya and Prakash were also lovers. Flashbacks flesh out Priya’s romantic relationships with Fiona and then Prakash and recall bumpy patches in her six years with Alex. The last time Priya saw Prakash, he was married; does his plan to visit alone mean that he and his wife, Aruna, have divorced? A visit from close friends Skye and Liz raises more uncomfortable questions. The third of Mootoo’s four movements is narrated by Alex, whose insight and compassion come into play after Prakash shares personal secrets that even Priya hadn’t known. A final heart-to-heart between Priya and Prakash triggers still more changes.

Compellingly charts the complexity of human relationships, the illusions of memory, and the corrosive power of denial.

Kirkus Reviews

"With grace and dexterity, Polar Vortex maps the interiority of middle age lesbians and the complex and fraught intimate dances of couples . . . Here is a writer at the full height of her power asking vital, important questions rendered beautifully through character, setting, and plot. Here is a writer demonstrating with passion and power the importance of art to understanding the world. What pleasure!"

Lambda Literary

"A married lesbian couple (one an Indo-Trini immigrant) deals with ongoing secrets and jealousies and the sudden intrusion of a former male friend (a Ugandan Indian immigrant) from one of their pasts, leading to unexpected consequences."
—New West Indian Guide

"What Mootoo executed perfectly was the duality that lies within each of us, the capacity to be extremely open and also self-servingly deceitful. We all make mistakes, hurt each other and ourselves, but without true communication and acknowledgement, only the wounding remains."
—2T Reads

"A tantalizing mix of psychological thriller and literary fiction...Mootoo brilliantly explores white discourse about queer sexuality and identity, refugee experiences, the triple effects of sexism, racism, and homophobia on queer women of color, and more."
—Autostraddle, included in 65 Queer and Feminist Books Coming Your Way in Fall 2020

One of the Bay Area Reporter's Fantastic Fiction picks

"A slow-burning examination of identity, gender, desire, and immigration...Mootoo's subtle, thought-provoking tale stands out among stories of characters gripped by the past."
—Publishers Weekly

"Compellingly charts the complexity of human relationships, the illusions of memory, and the corrosive power of denial."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Polar Vortex is a powerful, fraught, and inventive exploration of the impossibility of ever really knowing the people we come to love. Told in urgent, incandescent prose and effortlessly spinning in and out of time, the book is an intimate and starkly honest examination of the complexities of sexual identity, lust, shame, regret, and how we, no matter where we come from or how we identify, are at our most complicated when it comes to the whims and failings of the human heart."
—Joe Meno, author of Marvel and a Wonder

"How to know the shifting pieces of ourselves, how to acknowledge contradictory desires, as we are pulled into the maelstrom of desire and memory? Shani Mootoo's intimate new novel suspends us in the vortex between acts of betrayal and acts of love. It is a powerfully unsettling work from a brilliant artist."
—Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

"The past isn't even past—and the present is tense with conflicting desires and untold stories. What brings clarity to this setting is Shani Mootoo's limpid prose, clean and bracing. Polar Vortex is an honest, but also moving, exploration of true intimacy."
—Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana

"What a gorgeous and thrilling novel. Beautifully crafted, with perfect form and icy-clear tone—Shani Mootoo held me under her spell until the shock and release of the last page!"
—Sarah Selecky, author of Radiant Shimmering Light

From the Publisher