Advertisement

Art & Books

Michael Crummey

GALORE by Michael Crummey (Doubleday Canada), 336 pages, $32.95. Rating: NNNN


Within the first few pages of Newfoundland writer Michael Crummey’s latest novel, Galore, an albino man is born from the side of a beached whale.

[rssbreak]

That kind of magical storytelling fills the book – just named a finalist for the Governor General’s award – set in the small fishing town of Paradise Deep and covering six generations of townsfolk through the 19th and into the 20th century. Like the locale, the inhabitants often have Biblical names: Judah, Lazarus, Abel and Absalom among them.

The central characters are the Devine and the Sellers families, whose members hold decades-long grudges yet also fall in love with each other. Crummey draws his large cast of Irish immigrant characters with dark humour, blending the comic and the grotesque.

His masterfully precise, image-filled prose jumps across the decades, linking people and filling in their pasts with a parade of rich yet succinct incidents. These people are stubborn, tenacious and passionate.

Paradise Deep’s history includes witchcraft, Christmas mummers, cuckoldry, generational conflict, superstitions, fights between Catholics and Protestants, union organizing, the rise and fall of cod fortunes and a triangle involving a libidinous priest, a widow and the ghost of her husband.

As if saving the best for last, Crummey ends his book with a sixth-generation character during the First World War, a man whose fortunes circle back to the start of the narrative in touching, beautifully evocative fashion.

Crummey reads alongside John Bemrose, Jacob McArthur Mooney and Leon Rooke on October 29.

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.