Michael Crummey

In Galore, Micheal Crummey creates a community in Newfoundland that begins in the late 1700s and stretches all the way past WWI. Through six generations of families, he explores pretty much everything that makes a community. There are memorable events and memorable characters, but the real brilliance of the book is how the community develops. In the beginning, there is a man who washes up on shore in the belly of a whale, half of one beat up Bible, medicine by superstition, no school, no show more libraries, no art for art's sake, no churches. By the end of the book there are competing churches, a doctor well-versed in the knowledge of the time, corporations and labor unions, schools, artists, etc.

But is life better? Is it progress?

These questions aren't asked directly, but they were on my mind while reading this. Crummey takes you such a long way with this community, but there are consistent references to the past that keep your mind on where it started and where it ended up.

I found it thought-provoking and smart, though as with many books that span a lot of time, some generation's characters engaged me more than others.
I enjoyed this and would like to read more by Michael Crummey. show less

“He ended his time on the shore in a makeshift asylum cell, shut away with the profligate stink of fish that clung to him all his days. The Great White. St. Jude of the Lost Cause. Sea Orphan …” (Ch 1)

So begins Galore, set in the Newfoundland outport, Paradise Deep. The villagers are gathered by the sea, where a whale has beached itself. Borne of the enormous mammal is Judah, a “sea orphan” with skin as white as snow, and the fiercest stench, a “faux-albino of indeterminate age." show more (Ch 5) The day is a special one, the day of the Feast of St Mark – the novel will end on the same day, many generations and roughly two centuries later. In between, Crummey delights with a fabulous tale, filled with a plethora of rough-and-tumble oddball characters and rich in Newfoundland folklore.

Paradise Deep, as observed by one of the rare newcomers to the village, is something of a "medieval world," "half fairy tale," its inhabitants "quietly lunatic." The outport is home to two predominant families – the Devines and the Sellers – from which most of its population has sprung. Devine’s Widow, an elderly crone thought by many to be a witch, is the matriarch of the first. Her nemesis is the patriarch of the second: King-me Sellers, magistrate, merchant, and tyrant. Between the two families plays out the mother of all grudges and feuds! Discord is played out by other forces, too, both religious and political: the Catholic and Anglican churches are rocked by a vitriolic (and sometimes humourous) split; and the novel’s historical framework introduces bitter union/merchant politics as fishermen in the community, suffering from Sellers’ stranglehold on fish prices and trade, are recruited to unionize. As the title promises, other abundances are plenty in Paradise Deep: feast, famine, poverty, riches (thought certainly not in equal measure), heartbreak, loss, and deep and abiding love. Father Phelan, one of the novel’s many memorable hardscrabble characters, tends often to the abundances of philandering and alcoholism:

“’You’d be a half-decent priest if you gave up the drinking and whoring,’ she told him. – ‘Half-decent, he said, wouldn’t be worth the sacrifice.’ He was mean and mercurial and abrupt, the sort of man you could imagine slipping through an outhouse hole when circumstances required it. He was fond of quoting the most outrageous or scandalous confessions from his recent travels, he named names and locations, adulteries and sexual proclivities and blasphemies. He had no sense of shame and it was this quality that marked him as a man of God in the eyes of his parishioners.” (Ch 1)

Michael Crummey is a new experience for me, and what a treasure! His writing is superb – his mastery of Newfoundland’s vernacular seemingly effortless. I’ve long been enamoured of Canada’s East coast writers – our Atlantic storytellers have a way with a yarn which is exactly my cuppa. And Crummey has certainly earned a place of honour among them with Galore. I’ll be looking for more of his work. Very highly recommended.

“– You’re giving up the drink, Father? – I’d sooner be dead.” (Ch 4) show less

It was the kind of brutal winter day it seems only Newfoundland can produce. Only funerals had been held in the church that winter some two hundred years ago, but now a small group were gathered to witness the marriage of a fourteen year old girl to a drunken but well off man, “not so much hungover as still in his altitudes”.

The dread demand about impediments to the marriage was asked. Stunning those gathered there, a person in a man’s green velvet jacket and striped waistcoat with the show more voice of a woman stepped forward with her objection. It was the Widow Caines. Her objection was recognised. The marriage did not go through, and the alliance of the two biggest enterprises on the shore did not happen.

What followed was a lifetime of ruthless scheming, animosity, and treachery, tearing the small community of Mockbeggar apart. The Widow, and Abe Strapp the erstwhile bridegroom, were locked in an economic mortal combat until death or bankruptcy should intervene. No one who lived in or visited the outport was spared.

There were a few innocents in the community, a trio of teenagers who tried to stay as honest as they could, and their story is intimately involved with that of the two main protagonists. As for the rest, they did what they could to survive. Foremost among these was the Beadle, a character Dickens himself would have been proud to create.

Crummey’s language marvellously captures the time and the weather; the times definitely improved now, the winter only marginally so. He says he used the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue for some of the more arcane words. Anyone who has lived in Newfoundland for any time though will recognise the dexterity of wit and language employed here. The dictionary only augments it.

This was a strange reading experience. I could have sworn as I read along that I had read it before, but I knew that definitely wasn’t the case. Perhaps it was a result of the numerous author interviews and readings I had heard on the radio. No matter. It was an excellent book, yet one more in Michael Crummey’s oeuvre. I’d be happy to read it again, knowing this time I actually had read it. show less

For over a hundred years, Moses Sweetland’s family has lived on a secluded island off the coast of Newfoundland. Though it once held its own in the bustling fishing industry, the decline of recent years has sparked the mainland government to offer the residents a generous resettlement package, with the requirement that every inhabitant leave. One by one, even the most dogmatic of Sweetland’s neighbors give in to the idea of relocation, leaving the man pondering his past, his family and show more the secrets that haunt the land around him.

Though it took some time to settle into the novel’s quiet, almost distant style, I immediately began to appreciate Michael Crummey’s knack for showing over telling. Every bit of Sweetland‘s landscape, from familial connections to topography and even diagnoses, is laid out in delicate woven threads instead of harsh lines. The novel begs for attention, and close reading is rewarded with an investment in Crummey’s irresistible characters.

“Clara laid a hand across her eyes and there was her mother, Sweetland thought. Clara had almost nothing else of Ruth in her, but that subtle gesture of exhaustion or anxiety or annoyance was Sweetland’s sister to a T. He took the meat across the kitchen to the freezer, to put a little more space between himself and that eerie transformation.”

Sweetland tightens its grip in the second half, with Moses and the surrounding landscape meeting in a wash of memory and realization. In the intricate lives of his layered characters, Michael Crummey reminds us of the clear, sometimes heartbreaking distinction between seclusion and solitude.

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