Following is a review of Sweetland by Michael Crummey, Liveright
Publishing Company, NY, 2014.
In
preparation for a trip to Newfoundland several years ago I read a wonderful
novel entitled Galore by Michael
Crummey. That story encapsulated a sense
of the island and the people who lived there with their peculiarities and
foibles. It was an extremely well told
tale. So I was pleased to find a newer
book by the same author set again in Newfoundland. Like Galore,
Sweetland deserves plaudits.
The plot of the novel is fairly simple. A
village on an outlying island is fading away and the government decides to
relocate all the residents to the mainland (which, of course, is also an
island, although much, much larger). The
hitch is that all of the 100 or so residents must accept the government’s
offer. Several, including the story’s
protagonist, Moses Sweetland, stubbornly refuse, but they are ultimately
pressured into acceptance by their neighbors.
However, following the death of his great nephew Jesse, Sweetland
changes his mind, fakes his own death and stays behind to eke out a solitary
existence.
The beauty
of the story is in the characters, dimples and warts included, mostly recalled
through the memories of Moses Sweetland.
The islanders were a peculiar bunch, as is Sweetland himself. The tapestry jerks forward and backward with
various anecdotes and pieces of history fleshing out the tale in a sporadic
fashion. Ultimately, of course,
Sweetland has to come to terms with himself, his own past, his relationships
and his ghosts. Along the way the reader is pulled into a better understanding
not just of the hard scrabble life on an out island, but of the complex web of
human ties that bind and blind relationships.
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