As the end of the 20th century nears, the Hawco family's bloodlines have grown tainted and confused. Men fail their families through enforced idleness, and the once-vivid ghosts of their ancestors have slipped into murk, forgotten along with the rest of history. Blackstrap Hawco is a defiant man born with little more than a body and spirit that refuse to give up, and the menacing strength of pride. For the Hawcos of Newfoundland, was it not ever so? From the arrivals of the indentured Irish to the Victorian drawing rooms of the English merchants, from the perilous adventures of the seal hunt to the raucous iron ore mines, from a notorious disaster at sea to the relocation of outport communities, the Hawco story might be all the family has left. But as Blackstrap Hawco—a novel that will consume you in its dazzling swirl of voices, legends, and beautiful hearsay—testifies, a story this haunting, this powerful, might just be enough.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Harvey’s searing narrative encapsulates the brutal, majestic history of Newfoundland by outlining the events and experiences that shaped the characteristically dismal history of the extended Hawco family. Stretching back and forth through time as Blackstrap details the often painful exploits and ordeals suffered by the Hawco clan during the twentieth century, the hapless narrator serves as both a pitiable victim of his hardscrabble working-class circumstances and as a noble symbol of endurance and tenacity. Starkly elegant, the author’s prose mirrors the desolate magnificence of the island itself. After years of being overshadowed by its culturally overpowering neighbor to the south, Canadian literature is finally coming into its own and savvy readers are sitting up and taking notice of writers like Harvey who mine uniquely Canadian experiences to tremendous effect. --Margaret Flanagan
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Review
"Starkly elegant." —Booklist
“Brilliant.” —Times Colonist
“Mesmerizing scenes worthy of a national epic . . . Its meticulous construction and control contain a breadth of incident and characterization seen only in the most ambitious and imposing novels.” —Globe & Mail
“Epic and masterful.” —January Magazine
"To adequately explain in simple terms this 829-page pageant of life, told in intensely physical and painful terms reminiscent of James Joyce’s Ulysses, is nearly impossible. Reading it is essentially an existential experience . . . [a] highly original novel told in a style akin to an impressionist painting." —Canada Post
“Blackstrap Hawco is an ambitious book, far-reaching, deliberately complex, blunt, ruthless and lyrical.” —The Telegram
“Brilliant . . . a loving tribute to the uniqueness of Newfoundland.” —Winnipeg Free Press
"Blackstrap Hawco is in every way a large novel: large in scope, large in ambition, and large in achievement." —Quill & Quire
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More About the Author
International bestselling author Kenneth J. Harvey's books are published in Canada, the US, the UK, Russia, Germany, China, Japan, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and France. He has won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Winterset Award, Italy's Libro Del Mare, and has been nominated for the Giller Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. His editorials have appeared on CBC Radio, in The Times (London) and in most major Canadian newspapers, including The Globe & Mail, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Telegraph Journal, Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star and Halifax Daily News.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Do you like ugly, depressing books?,
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This review is from: Blackstrap Hawco (Paperback)
I read about 600 pages of this book before I put it down in frustration. I only read this far because I kept thinking that surely the author had some purpose in writing such a long book and eventually I would be able to figure it out. But no, it just went on and on describing the life of an immigrant family in Newfoundland. A group of poor,mean, ignorant (and proud of it), unhappy people. The main character, Blackstrap Hawco, is typical of the group. Mentally unbalanced, he and his cohorts endure tragedy after tragedy, quite a few of them self induced. You would be hard pressed to find another group of such unlikeable characters.
I also didn't care for the author's style of jumping back in forth in time so much. This technique works well for some authors, but in this case, it just seems to add to the disconnectedness of the novel. The author also has a penchant for having his characters seeing ghosts; perhaps this is his way of emphasizing the fragile nature of the character's sanity. Whatever his purpose, I found this jarring, inserting a woo-woo factor in a gritty ugly reality just didn't work for me. All in all, I'm sorry I wasted so much time on this book.
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