Review of THE TESTAMENTS by Margaret Atwood

4 Stars

Narrated by three women, this novel is set 15 years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale. 

Aunt Lydia, a villain in The Handmaid’s Tale, secretly writes her memoirs explaining how she became a founder of the Gilead regime.  Agnes is a young woman who has grown up in Gilead and is being groomed to marry a Commander.  Daisy is a 16-year-old living in Canada with her very protective parents.  Of course, there are connections among the three, but these are known only to Aunt Lydia and eventually revealed to the reader – though many may guess their identities fairly early in the narrative.

It is Aunt Lydia’s voice that is compelling.  She is revealed to be more than the one-dimensional villain she seems in The Handmaid’s Tale.  Her backstory explains why she became an early collaborator with the Gilead regime.  As a founder, she has a statue which she sees as representing “my idealism, my unflinching commitment to duty, my determination to move forward despite all obstacles” (3).  This is the woman we recognize, but we also hear about her regret at having to use physical force:  “This weapon, [a Taser], reminds me of my failings:  had I been more effective, I would not have needed such an implement” (4).  She and three other women become founders, creating the “laws, uniforms, slogans, hymns, names” (177) that govern women’s lives in Gilead society; she helps create a system that exploits and violates women.  Aunt Lydia’s feelings about her role are mixed:  “Did I hate the structure we were concocting?  On some level, yes:  it was a betrayal of everything we’d been taught in our former lives, and of all that we’d achieved.  Was I proud of what we managed to accomplish, despite the limitations?  Also, on some level, yes.  Things are never simple” (178).

Aunt Lydia is certainly a complex figure.  Her intelligence and cunning are obvious.  She knows that even she is not totally safe because Gilead is rotten at its core, so she works at solidifying her power by appeasing male egos and devising subtle plots to punish enemies and gain allies.  The extent of her vengeful nature is foreshadowed:  “I will get you back for this.  I don’t care how long it takes or how much shit I have to eat in the meantime, but I will do it” (149).  Yet in the end, she asks the reader, “Try not to think too badly of me, or no more badly than I think of myself” (404). 

Aunt Lydia’s voice is so compelling, Daisy and Agnes pale in comparison.  They seem like typical YA protagonists.  Agnes even has the wicked stepmother who makes her life miserable.  What is interesting is how their very different upbringings have formed their personalities and attitudes.  Daisy, raised in Canada, is feisty and rebellious whereas Agnes, raised in Gilead, is meek and obedient.  Being able to wear jeans and a T-shirt makes Daisy “feel more like myself” (364) while the same attire makes Agnes uncomfortable:  “I found the clothing provided for us disagreeable in the extreme.  The underwear was very different from the plain, sturdy variety . . . it felt slippery and depraved.  Over that were male garments.  It was disturbing to feel that rough cloth touching the skin of my legs, with no intervening petticoat.  Wearing such clothing was gender treachery and against God’s law” (365). 

The commentary about Gilead society –  which so often reflects contemporary society – is interesting.  For instance, “The doctors, the dentists, the lawyers, the accountants:  in the new world of Gilead, as in the old, their sins are frequently forgiven them” (252) and “The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated” (387).  Parallels are often emphasized.  For example, one cannot but think of the current migrant crisis when reading, “people were risking their lives walking north to the Canadian border in winter” (51) and “I hadn’t considered what it was like to leave a place you knew, and lose everything, and travel into the unknown.  How hollow and dark that must feel, except for maybe the little glimmer of hope that had allowed you to take such a chance” (271). 

The ending of the novel is more positive than that of The Handmaid’s Tale.  Resistance has grown and the regime seems to be crumbling.  The Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale indicates that Gilead does fall; The Testaments explains how that fall comes about.  The adventure story at the end that helps to bring about Gilead’s downfall is not the most enjoyable part of the novel; I found myself having to suspend disbelief. 

The Testaments is an enjoyable read.  Of course, it is not as impactful as The Handmaid’s Tale, but it would have been foolish to expect otherwise. 

THE HANDMAID'S TALE by Margaret Atwood

Before reading The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale which has just been released, I decided to re-read the latter first.  I’ve watched the first two seasons of the television series adaptation and wanted to get back to the book, back to the original.  I first read The Handmaid’s Tale over 30 years ago, shortly after it was published, so my memory certainly needs refreshing.

Rather than write a typical book review of The Handmaid’s Tale, I thought I’d focus on the differences between the book and the first season of the television version.  (Subsequent seasons are totally outside the parameters of the book.)

In the book, the narrator is Offred.  We are never told her real name.  In the tv show, the protagonist is named June, a name mentioned only once in the novel (14).  The two Offreds are different too.  The book’s Offred is quite passive; survival seems to be her priority.  Even as a young woman, she didn’t take part in protests before she became a handmaid:  “I didn’t go on any of the marches’ (189).  In the book, it is Offred’s mother who is the activist.  When approached by Ofglen to become a spy for the Mayday resistance, Offred declines.  June in the television version is much more active and rebellious.  She and her friend Moira took part in protest marches; in the third episode, the two women run and hide in a cafe when law enforcement officials open fire on the crowd.  June also collects a secret package of letters for Mayday.  In the book, Offred does not take part in the Salvaging, whereas in the tv version, she is among the first to participate. 

Fred and Serena Joy Waterford are developed more in the television series.  The book doesn’t even conclusively identify a surname.  Both are younger on the screen; in the book, for instance, Serena uses a cane.  Through flashbacks we see the relationship between husband and wife when they first met.  The show also emphasizes the pivotal role Serena played in the creation of Gilead. 

Other characters are also given more prominence in the adaptation.  In the book, Nick remains a much more mysterious character because we have access only to Offred’s thoughts.  In the television show, flashback scenes offer some insight into his life pre-Gilead and his motivations are clearer.  Two other handmaids are given substantial stories in the adaptation that are not mentioned in the book.  Ofglen has a role in the resistance, but we don't know many details about her.  In the tv show, she is given a backstory and we witness her genital mutilation.  Janine is another handmaid whose story differs though she is psychologically frail in both; in the television version, she is a much more sympathetic character.  In the latter, she is punished with blindness in one eye (not maiming of the feet) and then gives birth to a girl who dies.  In the television version, she gives birth to a healthy baby girl.  After being separated from Angela, Janine suffers a psychological breakdown, kidnaps Angela, and threatens to jump off a bridge with the baby in her arms.  The show also adds a particicution involving Janine which never appears in the book.  Aunt Lydia is a much more prominent character on the show; in the book, she is mentioned only in flashbacks.  When Offred sees her at the salvaging, she comments, “It’s Aunt Lydia.  How many years since I’ve seen her?  I’d begun to think she existed only in my head” (286). 

What happens to some characters is explained more in the adaptation.  For example, the book suggests that Luke is dead, but the television series shows Luke living in Canada.  The latter also offers more of the backstory of Luke and June’s relationship.  In the novel, Moira just disappears; Offred sees her at Jezebel’s and then, “I don’t know how she ended, or even if she did, because I never saw her again” (262).  In the adaptation, Moira manages to escape to Canada where she reunites with Luke.  In the book, Offred is shown a photo of her daughter (who is never named); in the tv version, June actually sees Hannah.  Most significantly, Offred’s pregnancy is not confirmed in the book.  She tells Nick that she is but she admits, “This I know is wishful thinking” (283).  In the series finale, Serena gives June a pregnancy test which proves to be positive.

There are other minor differences too.  Cora, the maid in the Commander’s house, is supportive of Offred but there is no such character in the adaptation.  Offred’s mother was a major influence on her daughter, but she is just a shadow in the tv version.  In the book, Offred’s daughter is abducted in a grocery store, not a maternity ward as in the adaptation.  Handmaids no longer have an identifying tattoo; in the updated tv series, they have a tracker attached to an ear.  In the book, people of colour have been resettled elsewhere; in the other, there are a number of characters of colour:  Luke and Moira are black and Hannah is biracial.  A major addition to the adaptation is the Mexican trade delegation which is the means of bringing June information about her husband. 

Now that I’ve separated the television show from the novel, I’m ready to read The Testaments.

Review of THE TRAVELLING CAT CHRONICLES by Hiro Arikawa

3 Stars

I’m more a dog person than a cat person, but my husband and I had cats in the past, so I picked up this book because I was looking for something different to read.

Satoru, a man in his thirties, rescues an injured stray cat which he names Nana.  They live together happily for five years.  Then they set out on trips across Japan to visit friends because Satoru is looking to rehome Nana; “’unavoidable circumstances’ were preventing him from keeping [his precious cat] any longer.”  Nana wants to stay with Satoru and sets out to sabotage the visits so Satoru has to keep him. 

Much of the story is narrated in the first person by Nana, but there is also a third person narrator who gives the backstory of Satoru’s growing up and how he came to become friends with the people they visit. 

Satoru’s character is developed through his interactions with people and Nana.  He comes across as a truly good person – kind and loving towards animals and humans.  Despite hardships, he doesn’t wallow in self-pity and tries to be optimistic. 

Nana’s character is also developed.  He is a proud cat who sees himself as “a rare, wise cat” and “a high-spirited, adventurous cat that will never be intimidated.”  What differentiates him is that he is a cat capable of loyalty and gratitude, the perfect cat for a good man like Satoru.  Of course, it is Nana’s observations about humans and the world that stand out.  For instance, “Humans always underestimate our language skills.  Just ‘cause they can read and write, there’s no need to act all high and mighty.”  Anyone who has ever had a cat will recognize the truth in comments on feline behaviour:  “Cats the world over prefer to discover things they like on their own and rarely go for anything that’s been provided for them.”

In some ways, the book is a self-improvement book offering advice on how to live.  For example, Kosuke, the first friend they visit, learns that it is important to be independent from one’s parents.   Another man’s “sense of inferiority and jealousy diminish” after Satoru and Nana’s visit.  Optimism is emphasized:  “it would be better to keep a smile on your face till the end.  And then I’m sure you’ll be happier.”

The novel is an easy read.  There is little mystery as to why Satoru is looking for a new home for Nana; however, though there is sadness, the overall tone is optimistic.  We are encouraged to think of life as a journey during which we can “see all kinds of amazing things.  Let’s spend our time taking in as many wonderful sights as we can.”

Review of AKIN by Emma Donoghue

3.5 Stars

Noah Selvaggio, a retired chemistry professor living in New York, decides to make a trip to Nice, France, for his 80^th birthday.  He hasn’t been back since he was four years old.  His plans are altered when he becomes a temporary guardian for his 11-year-old great-nephew Michael.  Since there is no one else to care for Michael, the childless widower agrees to look after him in the short term and takes him to France.

While in France, Noah tries to uncover the significance of some photos his mother left behind.  They were apparently taken during World War II in Nice, after Noah’s mother had sent him to the U.S.  Why did his mother abandon him for two years?  With the help of the tech-savvy Michael, Noah is able to find some answers to his questions. 

The mystery surrounding Noah’s mother is not difficult to solve.  I found that Noah tends to jump to conclusions when other possibilities are so obvious.  He talks about “’the law of closure.  Like closing a gap.  The viewer fills in what they don’t see, what’s missing.’”  The problem is that Noah does not behave like an 80-year-old man who was a scientist.  Considering his age and his background, he should certainly be more cautious and considered when making inferences.

It is the character of Michael that makes the novel.  His behaviour rings so true.  He’s street-wise and defiant; he’s often foul-mouthed and tends to be glued to his cell phone on which he constantly plays games.  As would be expected of a boy his age, he loves scatological humour.  His attention span tends to be limited.  Beneath the bravado however, there is a child who has experienced loss and has a number of stresses in his life. 

The repartee between Noah and Michael emphasizes the gulf between the two.  There is the obvious age gap but there are other differences as well.  Noah would be considered wealthy, living in a tony part of the city, whereas Michael comes from an impoverished background and has lived in a rough neighbourhood where safety is a major concern.  It is inevitable that conflicts and misunderstandings arise, especially because Noah tends to make assumptions about Michael’s upbringing.

There is also humour because of their different interests.  Michael’s attire makes little sense to Noah:  “Michael’s T-shirt said WINTER IS COMING, which seemed belated, in February.”  The Game of Thrones reference means nothing to Noah.  Likewise, Noah’s old fedora has Michael commenting, “’What’s up with that hat?’”  When Noah explains that the hat is an heirloom, Michael asks, “’What’s an air loom?’”   Noah tends to be pedantic and Michael just tunes out. 

As is expected, the two learn from each other.  Though Michael often seems to be inattentive, he proves that he has learned some of Noah’s lessons.  Noah realizes his biases and decides that there may be little to mark his time on earth, “only any individual’s short, incalculable tally,” but he can perhaps help Michael:  “But really all Noah was attempting to do was fill a gap; throw his ungainly self down so the kid could cross over the abyss.  Weren’t we all of us bridges for each other, one way or another?”

I’ve read most of Emma Donoghue’s books.  I’m not sure I’d rank this one among her best, but it is brisk and entertaining.  Though somewhat predictable, it has a truly authentic character in Michael, and for him and his verbal exchanges with Noah, the book is worth reading. 

Review of OLIVE, AGAIN by Elizabeth Strout (New Release)

4.5 Stars

Olive, Again is structured like its predecessor Olive Kitteridge:  there are 13 interwoven stories.  As before, Olive does not appear in all of the stories, but in each she makes a brief appearance or is at least mentioned.  Some new characters are introduced, but some reappear and have their stories continued. 

Strout excels at showing the lives of ordinary people struggling with some aspect of the human condition.  Olive is trying to understand herself and her life; in particular, she struggles with the realities of aging and loneliness. 

Olive remains opinionated and brutally honest.  Her second husband tells her, “’God, Olive, you’re a difficult woman.  You are such a goddamn difficult woman, and fuck all, I love you.’”  I loved one woman’s description of her as “’That pickle person’” and a man’s summary of her:  “’Olive thinks everything is crap . . . That’s just who she is.’” 

Though she remains cantankerous, she has also become more self-reflective.  She acknowledges her flaws and faults.  She admits that she does not have all the answers:  “She, who always thought that she knew everything that others did not.  It just wasn’t true.”  She realizes that she was not the perfect parent and bears responsibility for the tension with Christopher whom she now understands she raised as “a motherless child.”  It is ironic that as a teacher she told her students, “’”You all know who you are.  If you just look at yourself and listen to yourself, you know exactly who you are.  And don’t forget it.”’”  It is only as an old woman that she seems to understand who she is.  She recognizes that others may know her better than she knows herself; a former student who has become a poet sees Olive’s loneliness in a way Olive herself has not acknowledged. 

Olive growth is also shown in her attitude towards others. Because Olive is socially awkward, having no patience for small talk, she has difficulty making friends.  However, when she sees another woman who is obviously tentative in a social situation, Olive speaks to her.  When that woman introduces herself as Isabelle Daignault, Olive’s prejudice against French-Canadians appears.   Olive has also always disliked people who are “mousy” and Isabelle’s appearance is such that Olive even nicknames her “Mousy Pants“.  Nevertheless, despite these biases, Olive gives Isabelle a chance, and the two develop a wonderful friendship.   

Olive does become a better person.  She has regrets (“It was herself, she realized, that did not please her”), but she tells a friend, “’At times these days – rarely, very rarely, but at times – I feel like I’ve become, oh, just a tiny – tiny – bit better as a person.’”  I think she is so much more self-aware though she claims, “I do not have a clue who I have been.  Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.”  Perhaps that is the clearest indication of her change. 

The theme is that, like the ants that show up in the first story, people must “Just [do] what they were meant to do, live until they died.”  In the middle of the book, another character states that our duty is “’To bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.’”  Olive says, “’Well, that’s life.  Nothing you can do about it.’”  We must, like Olive, pick ourselves up and do what we must do, even if that is just to “go get Isabelle for supper.”

Though there are certainly touches of humour, the book is very poignant.  Nonetheless, I can only describe the book as a gem.  Sequels often disappoint, but that is not the case here.  The book can be read as a standalone, but why not read or re-read Olive Kitteridge for an even richer experience reading Olive, Again.  Both books are magnificent.

Note:  I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout

4.5 Stars

Recently, I received an advance reading copy of Olive, Again which is a sequel to Olive Kitteridge, so I decided to read the latter before moving on to the former.

In terms of format, Olive Kitteridge consists of 13 interrelated short stories.  This is not my favourite narrative structure, but Elizabeth Strout makes it work. The eponymous character is a retired school teacher living in Crosby, Maine.  Olive does not appear in all of the stories, but in each she makes a brief appearance or is at least mentioned.  Over the course of the book, Olive’s personality is revealed in depth. 

The initial impression one has of Olive is not positive.  In the first story, which focuses on Henry, Olive’s gentle and kind husband, she comes across as callous and uncaring.  Her first words are about Denise, the young woman Henry hires to work in his drug store:  “’Mousy . . . Looks just like a mouse. . . . No one’s cute who can’t stand up straight.’”  Though she is “’Not keen on it,’” Henry invites Denise and her husband to dinner.  During that meal Olive scolds her husband for accidentally spilling ketchup and makes no effort to be gracious:  “For dessert they were each handed a blue bowl with a scoop of vanilla ice cream sliding in its center.”  Later, we learn that she never apologizes for her comments; Henry tells her, “’In all the years we’ve been married, all the years, I don’t believe you’ve ever once apologized.  For anything.’” 

This impression of Olive gradually changes.  Though she can be rude, selfish, and judgmental, she is also capable of compassion and understanding.  For example, when she meets a girl who has an eating disorder, she cries and says, “’I don’t know who you are, but young lady, you’re breaking my heart.’”   In some of the stories, we see the impact she has had on her former students; one girl remembers Mrs. Kitteridge saying, “’Don’t be scared of your hunger.  If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else.’”

Henry speaks of his wife as having “sharp opinions . . . stormy moods” and “a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away.”  Olive herself admits, “deep down there is a thing inside me, and sometimes it swells up like the head of a squid and shoots blackness through me.  I haven’t wanted to be this way.”  Her father committed suicide because of depression, and there is more than a hint suggesting that she herself is prone to periods of depression.  In fact, in the very first reference to Olive in the novel, there is mention of Henry’s uneasiness when “his wife often left their bed to wander through their home in the night’s dark hours.” 

Olive also proves to be a dynamic character.  She learns about herself.  She realizes that “the extreme capriciousness of [her] moods” and her bad temper and her trying to control her son’s life make her at least partially responsible for the tension between them.  She comes to accept that she has little control over people:  “Who in the world, this strange and incomprehensible world, did she think she was?”  She realizes that the reason she hates scared people, like the woman she describes as an “asseverating mouse,” is that “she hated the scared part of herself.” 

What Olive and others in the novel come to understand is that “life was a thing to celebrate” and we need to appreciate what we have when we have it.  It is only late in the book that Olive acknowledges “She’d never had a friend as loyal, as kind, as her husband.”  Henry always sees more than her “outer Olive-ness,” but she often sees only his timidity and that to her is a terrible flaw.  She realizes love should not be squandered:  “Love was not to be tossed away carelessly.”  In the end, she understands her flaws and so is less judgmental and more accepting of others.

Though, Olive is the focus of the novel, the individual stories focus on other people living in the community.  These stories can be read as standalone stories; each one shows have various people deal with what life brings them.  Everyone has “their basket of trips,” their hopes, and everyone has their burdens; it’s our approach to life that is important. 

I understand why Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitizer Prize for this book.  It portrays a complicated, flawed, and often contradictory individual in whom we cannot but recognize some aspects of ourselves. 

Olive, Again will be released in five days.  Check back on October 15 for my review!

Review of FINDERS KEEPERS by Stephen King

3 Stars

This is the second book of the Bill Hodges Trilogy beginning with Mr. Mercedes.

In 1978, Morris Bellamy invades the home of John Rothstein, a novelist famous for a trilogy of books featuring Jimmy Gold.  After killing Rothstein, Morris and his two partners steal money and dozens of notebooks which may hold more Jimmy Gold novels.  Morris is unhappy with Gold’s fate in the third novel and hopes Rothstein has written more about him.  Morris buries the money and notebooks in an old chest for temporary safekeeping but ends up in prison with a life sentence for another crime. 

Thirty years later, 13-year-old Pete Saubers, who lives in Morris’ childhood home, discovers the chest.  He uses the money to help his family which has struggled financially after his father was injured in the attack carried out by the Mercedes killer.  Pete reads the notebooks and, like Morris, falls in love with them.  What should he do with them?  Should be sell them to get more money?

The story alternates between Pete and Morris’ stories in both the past and present.  The reader knows that the two will meet somehow.  Bill Hodges, the retired police detective, is brought into the story when Pete’s sister becomes concerned about his strange behaviour.  Bill and his partners, Jerome and Holly, discover that Pete is in danger and needs their help.

Morris Bellamy is a problematic villain.  He has absolutely no redeeming qualities.  Then there’s his obsession with the fate of a character in a series of books.  He feels such an attachment to Jimmy Gold that he experiences sociopathic rage?  Really?  I get that he is selfish and immature (constantly blaming others for what has happened to him), but his behaviour in the climactic scene is just over the top.  I found it difficult to suspend disbelief, especially when Pete also falls in love with the same books.  I love reading and have read some transformative books but . . .

Once again, Bill Hodges does not behave like a retired police officer.  In Mr. Mercedes, he doesn’t call the police when it would be appropriate to do so, and that proves to be a life-changing error.  Yet, he again does not alert police when a body is discovered?! 

This book is very much an awkward middle book in a trilogy.  Hodges visits Brady Hartsfield, the villain from Mr. Mercedes, in the hospital, and it is obvious that King wants to get to the third book which will undoubtedly include another conflict between the two. 

Again, I enjoyed the reading by Will Patton on the audiobook, but as an example of the detective story genre, this book is only mediocre. 

Review of THE INNOCENTS by Michael Crummey

4 Stars

Michael Crummey’s novels appear regularly on nomination lists for Canada’s major literary awards and international ones as well.  Though just published, this book is no exception.

Ada and Evered Best, aged around 9 and 11 respectively, are orphaned and left to fend for themselves in an isolated cove in northern Newfoundland.  Their only contact with people is during the biannual visit of a supply ship.  Their lives are shaped by the “ratcheting wheel of the seasons” (88):  spring ice break-up, planting and harvesting a garden, the arrival of the caplin and then the cod, berry-picking, storing provisions for winter.  Theirs is a story of surviving food shortages, cold winters, ferocious storms, illness, and accidents.  The lesson that they learn perhaps more than any other is that “A body must bear what can’t be helped” (6, 24, 280). 

Ada and Evered know virtually nothing of the world outside the cove and their survival skills are limited to knowledge acquired by watching their parents:  “They were left together in the cove then with its dirt-floored stud tilt, with its garden of root vegetables and its scatter of outbuildings, with its looming circle of hills and rattling brook and its view of the ocean’s grey expanse beyond the harbour skerries.  The cove was the heart and sum of all creation in their eyes and they were alone there with the little knowledge of the world passed on haphazard and gleaned by chance” (5).

As little as they know of the world, they know perhaps even less about their bodies.  Ada knows almost nothing about menstruation and even less about sex and its role in conception.  As he approaches adolescence, Evered becomes subject to impulses he doesn’t understand but that engender “Pleasure and shame.  Shame and pleasure” (260).

From the beginning, what motivates them is their loyalty to each other.  The two manage to kill a seal and gorge on the fresh meat:  “Ada’s pale face was raw and her eyes red with the crying she’d done in the cold but there was an unmistakable glim of light beneath the skin, a look that redeemed every interminable hour Evered had spent exposed to the weather on the point” (42).  As time passes, their connection is complicated by the onset of sexual maturity, and they grow apart:  “They had all their lives been the one thing the other looked to first and last, the one article needed to feel complete whatever else was taken from them or mislaid in the dark.  But each in their own way was beginning to doubt their pairing was requisite to what they might want from life” (240).

Over time, they come to understand how complex people are.  Ada comes “to suspect a person might not be one simple thing, uniform and constant” (232).  Evered realizes that he cannot ever truly know his sister; he sees her vague silhouette in the dark and “he thought it was a genuine picture of Ada, that it was as true a sight as a person could hope to take of another in this life.  That anything more was gossip and fairy tale, umbrage, wishful thinking” (257).  Ada realizes that her brother can be light-hearted at the same time as he is privy to unspeakable acts committed in desperation and thinks, “It hardly seemed possible both those experiences could inhabit the same frame at the one time.  They should be different people, she thought, those boys” (237).  And Evered himself thinks he behaves like two different people:  “he’d shed lark for another plumage altogether” (268).

I was really wanting to learn more of the parents’ story.  Interesting tidbits are dropped like “the folly of couples being unevenly yoked” and “the burden of unknown transgressions” (56), suggestions that Sarah Best was a Catholic, who “would not submit to having her children baptized outside the Papist church” (63), and a tale of two brothers (225 – 227) which Evered cannot totally discount (281- 282).   Of course, the children know nothing of their parents’ origins, so the reader is ignorant and confused and so experiences what Ada and Evered experience.

Ada is a fascinating character.  She is such an innocent that she thinks reading “’was something you was born knowing . . . or not knowing’” (233).  When she understands that she can be taught, she desperately wants that.  She is attracted by beauty; she collects objects she considers beautiful, even stealing a bone pendant from a Beothuk burial site.  Later, she culls “the shells and rocks and feathers that had lost their lustre, objects that had once possessed a hit of magic or beauty or mystery and now seemed merely ordinary.  It was confounding to see magic and beauty and mystery leach out of a thing, to think it could be used up like a store of winter supplies” (184).  I found this last sentence to be so very sad. 

In the Acknowledgements, Crummey mentions The Dictionary of Newfoundland English as “a long-time source of inspiration and information” and suggests that his novel “would be a different and lesser thing without it.”  I have to agree.  I found myself making a list of Newfoundland words like dwy and gut-foundered.  And I understand how the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue offered words like blowsabella and madge cull and a description of joining giblets.

I certainly recommend this book, the story of “a pair of childish vagabonds passing through an abandoned northern kingdom” (111).  It is often an uncomfortable read since they are two innocents “abandoned [like] the blind cub to the indiscriminate work of nature” (178).  It is both heart-breaking and thought-provoking.