Reviews for Who Has Seen the Wind

The average rating for Who Has Seen the Wind based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-11-23 00:00:00 Jim Whitted Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I; But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. - Christina Rossetti ***** If you prefer plot over lyricism or a story that ties everything up in a nice neat bundle with a ribbon at the end, Who Has Seen the Wind is not your cup of tea. On the other hand, if you appreciate lyrical prose that could be read as poetry - or set to music - you will enjoy this coming-of-age story set in Saskatchewan during the 1930s. Here are a couple examples of what I mean: And all about him was the wind now, a pervasive sighing through great emptiness, as though the prairie itself was breathing in long gusting breaths, unhampered by the buildings of town, warm and living against his face and in his hair. I would walk to the end of the street and over the prairie with the clickety grasshoppers bunging in arcs ahead of me, and I could hear the hum and twang of wind in the great prairie harp of telephone wires. Standing there with the total thrust of prairie sun on my vulnerable head, I guess I learned - at a very young age - that I was mortal. The author nicely summarizes his book in its preface: "Many interpreters of the Bible believe the wind to be symbolic of Godhood. In this story I have tried to present sympathetically the struggle of a boy to understand what still defeats nature and learned men - the ultimate meaning of the cycle of life. To him are revealed in moments of fleeting vision the realities of birth, hunger, satiety, eternity, death. They are moments when an inquiring heart seeks finality, and the chain of darkness is broken. "This is the story of a boy and the wind." Published in 1947, Who Has Seen the Wind was W.O. Mitchell's debut novel and though he went on to write eight more, it is his best-known and best-loved book. It sold close to a million copies in Canada and the United States. He has been called the Mark Twain of Canada in recognition of this book and other stories he wrote about the adventures of young boys.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-23 00:00:00 Kiki Mvknll "It had something to do with dying; it had something to do with being born. Loving something and being hungry were with it too. He knew that much now. There was the prairie; there was a meadow lark, a baby pigeon, and a calf with two heads. In some haunting way the Ben was part of it. So was Mr. Digby." Thanks to my cross-Atlantic flight which kept me in a seat for hours with little distraction I finished reading the Canadian classic that is Who Has Seen the Wind. This is a feat that I probably would not have accomplished if I had any other options to occupy my time, because this was a really boring read. Imagine The Heart is a Lonely Hunter but without the tension, without a plot, without any of the interesting characters, and with a lot of gophers. Dead and alive gophers. Oh, and set in the prairies. To be fair, there were some good scenes in the book that did keep me reading but they were so under-developed in favour of the simplicity and celebration of the thoroughly uneventful, that they are hardly worth mentioning. Some involve people, some involve animals, one involves a gopher.