Gaff Topsails [Paperback]

Patrick Kavanagh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1996

Set in an Irish Catholic parish on the coast of Newfoundland, most of the events in this text take place on 24 June 1948 on the feast of St John the Baptist, the bringer of light commemorated with bonfires ignited on the headland. But it is also Midsummer's Day.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In this ambitious first novel, author Patrick Kavanagh chronicles a single day--June 24, the Feast of Saint John the Baptist--in a remote village in remote Newfoundland. June 24 is also Sweethearts Day, a day on which young women perform rituals as old as the hills to determine whom they will marry. These two celebrations, one Catholic, the other pagan, serve as the twin lodestones around which Gaff Topsails weaves its complex tale. On the one hand, there is Father MacMurrough, a restless priest who sees his new parish as a punishment and Kevin, an altar boy troubled by notions of God and sin; on the other there is Mary, a young woman in love with love and Michael Barron, a young mute who is starved for it. These characters live out their single day between the twin shadows of two mountains (Gaff Topsails) and an iceberg offshore, their physical isolation a symbol of the spiritual solitude in which they all exist.

Comparisons to James Joyce's Ulysses are, perhaps, inevitable, with the archetypes Kavanagh presents (the fisherman's wife waiting, like Penelope, for her husband to return from the sea), the fragmented narrative, and the occasional stream of consciousness. Like Ulysses, Gaff Topsails is not an easy book to read, but in the end, this novel rewards the patient reader with a crystalline portrait of a day in the life of a small community --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A 500-year-old Irish Catholic village on the Newfoundland coast comes to life in this assured debut, set in the years after WWII. Michael Barron, a young mute, is awakening to adulthood as he explores an enormous iceberg with his friends, still half in thrall to his father's stories of a beautiful woman who rides the ice, part Blessed Virgin Mary, part Coleridgean ghost. Although Michael is the novel's only mute, his silent isolation is common to nearly all Kavanagh's characters: Johnny the Light, an old, crippled hero, is a haunted, often delirious drunk; Father MacMurrough, new to the parish, has spent most of his adulthood in Asia avoiding village life and its unhappy associations; restless, teenage Mary loathes her mother and pursues a future husband through secret pagan rituals. This is nothing new. The village's founding father, Tomas Croft, was even more isolated, the son of an Irish monk who stole away from his English companions to land in Newfoundland in solitude. Shifting its focus from character to character, Kavanagh's sometimes ponderous narrative treats each individual story as a complete piece for the reader to assemble with the others. The abundance of period detail and unmistakable shadow of Joyce (whom Kavanagh claims to have helped translate into Mandarin) cast an occasional pall, but there is no mistaking the talent and vivid imagination at work throughout the novel.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 431 pages
• Publisher: Cormorant Books; First Edition edition (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0920953956
• ISBN-13: 978-0920953952
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,313,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most ambitious debut novel in years., July 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Gaff Topsails (Hardcover)

Gaff Topsails announces the arrival of a major new talent, Patrick Kavanagh. The verbal richness of the novel is breathtaking; Kavanagh takes you on flights of literary fancy that will make your heart soar. Yes, there are moments when Kavanagh overdoes the verbal pyrotechnics (see the Kirkus Review), but give him credit for shooting for the stars. At a time when most novelists try to be safe and pander to their reader's mediocrity, Kavanagh's epic ambitions should be trumpeted. I loved the book for its Joycean devotion to language and its deep understanding of the lives of average people. It's not an easy read by any means, but it brims with treasure. A must for lovers of serious fiction.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure insight, September 22, 2002

By 

Thomas E Moore (Crofton, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gaff Topsails (Hardcover)

This book tells a story that sounds specific to a niche population in a remote place, but reverberates with all of life's important issues: birth, maturity, sex, relationships, honesty, morality, spirituality, death. It focuses on a single day of life, yet explores the origins of a community over the prior twenty five generations. The writing style is unlike anything I've read before: lucid and rich in riveting imagery of both the beauty and squalor of subarctic living. Imagine an afternoon of teen recreations on a dangerously melting iceberg! Anyone with an interest in Newfoundland life will find this book essential reading. But I think this is also true for anyone with an interest in Irish emigration and new world settlement, or just Maritime humanity.

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Anyone who gave this book an award never read it!, October 10, 2000

By 

"peltier-associates" (Clinton Twp., MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gaff Topsails (Hardcover)

I purchased this book on the strong recommendations of Amazon readers and I was completely fooled. There is no story in this "story"; the book is a constant description of a small Irish town with some sparse dialog thrown in. Entire chapters of this book are completely irrevelant and should have been edited out. Save your time, read something else. Of the fifty books I have read this year, I would rate this one the worst by far.