The Cartographer of No Man's Land

The Cartographer of No Man's Land is another World War I story, so read no further if you're tired of the Great War. Canadian Angus MacGrath enlists after his brother-in-law is reported MIA; their bond is such that he is determined to find his BIL, regardless of the fact that there's a war on. Angus is told he'll be a cartographer in London, but naturally ends up on the front lines (all the better for searching for a missing soldier, no doubt). The book, P. S. Duffy's debut novel, alternates viewpoints between Angus in France and his son, Simon Peter, home in Nova Scotia. In that way, The Cartographer of No Man's Land becomes as much a coming-of-age story as a war story, and maybe more so.

I didn't love this book. I liked it, but it began very slowly and I was well, well into the book's 384 pages before I cared about the characters. I believe this is partly owing to the fact that there are a lot of characters, both in France and in Canada, and because of the perspective switching I'd have to jump back to previous chapters to remind myself who someone was; it was also, partly, owing to the fact that the story unfolds slowly, with much key history sprinkled here and there throughout the book. The book begins in February 1917 and ends in April 1918, which actually seems quite (too) compressed given all that happens.

Duffy does a nice job weaving in one of the greatest disasters to ever befall Canada's Maritime provinces, the Halifax Explosion in December 1917. Nova Scotia is beautiful land; it is surprising that, as prominently as Mahone Bay figures into the story, frequently I felt The Cartographer of No Man's Land could have been happening anywhere. In describing the Halifax Explosion, Duffy gives the reader the strongest sense of what this place - Nova Scotia, 1917 - was really like.

Ultimately, I liked Cartographer well enough, but unless you absolutely can't get enough of World War I fiction, you probably aren't missing too much.