Hailed as a great Canadian classic on boyhood, Who Has Seen the Wind evokes the sheer immensity of the prairie landscape, from the relentless wind to the far reaches of the bright blue sky. Like children everywhere, Brian O’Connal is a curious sort, and with enchanting naïveté he bestows his unforgettable perspective on everything from gophers to God, from his feisty Irish grandmother to his friends Ben and Saint Sammy, the town of Arcola’s local madman. This is no simple, forgettable novel: Mitchell gives readers a memorable glimpse into the ins and outs of small-town life during the Depression years, always through Brian’s eyes, and in doing so creates a poignant and powerful portrait of childhood innocence and its loss.
"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.
