Monkey beach essay example

Throughout Monkey Beach, author Eden Robinson effectively alternates passages transitioning between the present and flashbacks of Lisamarie’s life. It is through these flashbacks that Robinson is able to offer the reader a deep insight into Lisamarie’s childhood and upbringing.

As this is unfolding, Lisa smokes cigarettes and drifts off in various memories of her childhood and adolescence. The memories are often blended together in a non-linear way that makes the book less of a singular narrative than a stitching together of the various pivotal moments that have shaped Lisa's young life.

The novel is told by Haisla teenager Lisamarie Hill, whose Olympic hopeful swimmer brother is missing off a seiner. Her waking dream world is haunted by premonitions and wise ghosts; her life is tortured by school and the deaths of loved ones; her alcohol and drug consumption is its own exhausting dance.

The novel Monkey Beach, written by Eden Robinson, can be called an example of what Thomas King has named “associational literature” (King p.14) because, even though the novel includes issues which are directly connected to the impact and repercussions of colonialism, it does not place the colonizer at the center of the story.