Customer Reviews

Galore

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Michael Crummey was born & raised in Newfoundland, lives there still, and has set all of his meticulously researched novels & collections of short stories thus far in this beautiful, windswept, and harshly-demanding Canadian province.

is set in the outport villages of Paradise Deep and The Gut, joined by the Tolt Road over the headland between them, in an undefined period that covers most of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. The novel chronicles the lives of two rival families (the Sellers and the Devines) for six generations, and I often referred to the genealogy chart at the front of the book, especially during my first reading.

Inspired by the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Crummey has combined the starkly difficult conditions of pioneer outporters with a touch of magical realism. According to Wikipedia, magical realism is "an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even `normal' setting." This is Crummey's first use of the method in his novels.

Part 1 of Galore more or less moves around the life of Mary Tryphena Devine who is nine years old the winter day that a whale beaches itself in the bay. From the whale's belly emerges, half-dead, the man who becomes known as Judah, the Big White, whose presence will affect the lives of all in the port, and none more so than Mary Tryphena's.

As Mary Tryphena matures, marries, has sons (one illegitimate), and then grandchildren, the story goes back and forth between the history of Mary T.'s grandmother (Devine's Widow) and her parents, and the interconnection with King-Me Sellers and his grandson Absalom. The boy Absalom has fallen in love Mary T., who unbeknownst to him, is his first cousin. For this, he is banished to England for half a decade. While he is gone, Mary Tryphena is married to someone else and is lost to him.

Nearly four decades pass in the intermission between Parts 1 and 2, and we pick up the story with Mary Tryphena an old woman with the community role that her grandmother, Devine's Widow, had. We learn of the events of the intervening years through the eyes of two grown brothers we last knew as boys who ferry the young newly-arrived Dr. Harold Newman to patients by boat, by dog-sled and on foot.

As they tell the stories that the reader already knows, it becomes clear that a large number of the people in the community do not believe the stories that have been passed on. It's here that magical realism that has been interwoven into Part 1 is brought into question.

Did Judah really come out of the belly of the whale? Did he indeed bring the squid, and then fish galore? Did Callum really see the mermaid that the Woundy brothers nearly went overboard for? Was Jabez Trim's bible really found in the gullet of a cod? How do we explain Mr. Gallagher?

I'm not a fan of magical realism, but I think that part of the reason that the author could use the technique so readily and successfully in the first half of the saga is the vacuum of any other explanation of other-worldly phenomena. The itinerant priest who served the marrying, baptizing, and burying needs of the Catholic population was an agent of superstition. (Not that the population was any better served in later times with the Protestant Reverend Dodge and the Catholic priest of the season. Both applied scriptures harshly and the Catholic church especially meddled in the political affairs of the people, threatening ex-communication for anyone who joined the Fishermen's Protective Union in the early years of the twentieth century.)

Perhaps I just relate more easily to the starkness of early Newfoundland life than to the heat of Central America, but I found that, although I could not stomach Márquez, I loved the effect in Crummey's Galore.

One of the effects that I felt played a huge part in this novel is the indeterminate passage of time. Crummey might pick up the next paragraph, page or chapter with the following week, but just as often with thirty years in the past or ten years hence, with no explanation or placement. At first, I found this disconcerting but as the story developed, I found it to be one of its greatest strengths. Dates were not important, particularly in Part 1.

Time passed from one generation to the next, affected strongly by the last, and life went on unchanged. World events had little, if any, impact on the people's lives. There was no change in circumstances, no accumulation of material goods, no inheritances. There was simply the unending drudgery, cold, hunger, fishing, the cycles of plenty and want, the love, and the hate that remained the same for generation after generation. Hopeless circumstances and a futile existence.

Galore is not a happy book, but an amazingly powerful read. I highly recommend that you do just that.

I had occasion to read an Advance Reading Copy of Michael Crummey's third novel, Galore. It's the first Michael Crummey I've read, and I now know I need to read anything else by him I can get my hands on.

A multi-generational tale of community, Galore is set in a small fishing village in Newfoundland - exactly when and exactly where are not revealed. The story begins with the death of a whale, and a shocking discovery inside its belly.

It tracks generations of two families, the Sellers and the Devines, and their rivalries, grudging inter-dependence, secret romances and superstitions.

The village is entirely dependent on the mercy of the ocean - to provide their food, to return their sailors home safe, to not wash away their homes. Year after year, babies are born, people die, people marry, hopes are raised and dashed, and the ocean is there for it all, along with the mystery the dead whale brought.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. Galore is a treat to read, by turns dark and slippery, funny and quirky, heartbreaking and tragic, and the people feel real enough to touch. Their stories can't be put down. I recommend it highly.

Life in Paradise Deep is harsh and unforgiving. The small fishing community ekes out a meager existence often teetering on the brink of starvation and freezing to death during the bitter Newfoundland winters. "Galore" follows the lives of the motley inhabitants of the village over a century or so - largely focusing on their relations one to another and the evolution of the village itself.

Michael Crummey's storytelling was certainly unique - whether for good or ill. The story lacks both a principle protagonist and a central conflict and abandons any precept of proceeding chronologically within the book's first three paragraphs. The narrative is like a tangle of thread. Picking a random thread, the author slowly pulls it free, patiently revealing it to the reader. At some point the thread snags another. He turns his attention there, pulling with equal care and deliberation. Before each thread is free, another is snagged. Thus he bounces back and forth in time revealing some event or chain of events in the life of one character or another. Undoubtedly an oversimplification, but perhaps a more fitting analogy would be jumping from branch to branch on a family tree.

The result is a series of related but thinly drawn anecdotes. The characters were deeply human, but so quickly were they used and discarded, little attachment was formed. The book overflows with treachery and tragedy, but everything was given such short shrift the impact was severely limited. The mechanics were also unique in that the dialogue was denoted by hyphens or paragraph breaks instead of quotation marks.

The supernatural or mythical played a very minor role. The focus instead was a pragmatic look at 19th century Newfoundland life - the rigors of daily existence (which are vividly rendered), seasoned with religious and cultural strife, greed, politics, and, predominantly, family relations (largely dysfunctional).

There is a family tree reference at the beginning of the novel which can prove helpful (keeping the characters straight became a challenge). One wonders, however, if such a reference would have been necessary had the characters been more distinct and the story less convoluted.

While certainly intriguing and moderately affecting in its way, the novel seemed to lack an overall purpose. It was just too random to rate higher than three stars.

This book is the damnedest thing. It seems completely original, while reminding me of 100 Years of Solitude (which is the most obvious comparison), The Milagro Beanfield War, Wuthering Heights, and East of Eden. And I loved it. Mostly. But ultimately a kind of fatigue set in, as so many years and such a large cast of quirky (that's an understatement!) characters were burned through in such a surprisingly low page count. At times Crummey seems stingy, repeatedly making you fall in love with characters who then disappear until their death scene. And since the last section takes a unexpected turn for the gay, I was particularly surprised to find my attention flagging. Don't get me wrong - this is a book that I will absolutely read again, probably more than once... but I think it is - maybe - too much of a good thing. Ask me again in five years, I'm sure I'll remember it - and that's saying something, right there

Michael Crummey has penned a novel that combines the best elements of "The Shipping News" and "Moby Dick." In the hands of a lesser writer, the tale could have easily devolved into something cartoonish and bizarre. But Crummey has cobbled together a Dickensian cast of characters who inhabit two small desolate villages on the remote coast of Newfoundland - far from the "metropolis" of St. John. The action and mythology of the story covers several generations of the denizens of Paradise Deep and The Gut, with men and women and other worldly creatures struggling to scratch out a living from the sea. Throw in biblical elements of a man born from the belly of a beached whale, spectral figures that refuse to rest in peace following their death, tension among Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists, the burgeoning labor movement, World War I - and you have a rollicking tale. The description of the characters, place, smells, tastes, and blood feuds are so vivid that each time I picked up the book I felt myself instantly transported to this far off and alien world.

Even the laconic and taciturn Newfoundlanders speak volumes through their clipped speech, silences, deliberate actions, stubborn inactions, enigmatic looks, and miasmal smells. This is a very sensual story - assaulting all of the senses in a way that allows the reader complete immersion into the lives and ethos of the fictional communities.

This novel is destined to become a classic. I loved it.

This is a tale that has to be read....not just read...but read. You've got to pay attention and trying to guess what is going to happen is half the fun of reading "Galore". I was wrong almost every time and this is what a story SHOULD do. Nothing predictable, always changing direction, and leading me down a path only to have the unexpected turn, complete with a new obstacle, jumping in the way. This was my first foray into Michael Crummey's world....it will certainly not be my last.

Author Michael Crummy latest novel gives his readers an honest and substantial encounter with Newfoundland and its people. His writing paints a picture that is both mystical and somber. GALORE recounts the always vivid, occasionally brutal personal stories of six generations of two fishing families, the Sellers and the Devines, as they love and hate, live and die in the villages of Paradise Deep and The Gut. Part folktale and part history lesson, all related in no particular chronological order, part one of the novel is steeped in the folklore rooted in the rural past of this isolated province, complete with ghosts and witches, and explores the basis of the on-going animosity between the Sellers and Devine families.

In part two, Crummy brings us into the early twentieth century as he delves into the documented roles played by the Catholic Church and the Fisherman's Protective Union and their respective effects on this harsh and bleak piece of Atlantic real estate. His prowess with poetic prose entwines the folklore and superstitions of this little-known Canadian province and deftly blends fact and fiction into a richly textured saga that is hard to put down. Not the least of his accomplishments is the way he manages to capture the essence of the esoteric language used by these intrepid people, thereby lending an authentic flavor to the tale.

This book has a lot in common with another book I read recently. Both GALORE and Alice Hoffman's THE RED GARDEN have a fairy tale quality and both examine the folklore of their respective communities. While Alice Hoffman is admittedly a talented writer, Crummy's GALORE, in my humble opinion, is definitely the more dramatic and powerful of the two offerings.

The cover of my review copy of Michael Crummey's Galore is full of worshipful blurbs and lists of awards. Whenever I closed the book, thinking, enough, no more, I can't read anymore and I don't care, these words of praise would indict me, and then intrigue me, and then eventually goad me into trying one more time to make it through.

It's a month later, and I have finally battled my way through several hundred pages of the daily doings of these isolated, stubborn, religious and strange families on the Newfoundland coast. I find that I don't know what to say about these generations of odd and beautiful characters and their frostbite and pulled teeth and fish stink and gory births. It's a Byzantine effort, with some feuding and drinking and infidelity sprinkled in amongst the scalded skin, premature births and lost fingers. The writing is first-rate, evocative and amusing. But as it grinds and sloshes along, I can't find a point.

I wish someone would explain to me what the larger purpose is. Perhaps it would help me appreciate the book more, but at this point I am just intensely relieved to have made it all the way through. Clearly, with the acclaim garnered by this novel, the problem is mine. Fine, great, just so long as I'm DONE with it.

Five stars for masterful writing. One star for story and plot. That leaves us at three.

I started reading Galore and I was carried off my own feet in my small apartment in Nepal, carried to a cold and difficult island off the east coast of Canada. Carried so effectively that it didn't matter whether or not I previously thought of Newfoundland as such a barren, unwelcoming place, what mattered was that I believed it. I believed that a man could be cut from a whale and smell of fish ever after, that he could pass the trait to his son, that he could be mute and white and magical. I believed that the people worked terrifically hard, that the people had superstitions sewn into them from birth, that passing through the branches of a tree could save people's lives.

Galore was tough, unrelenting in character introduction and pace, epic in its portrayal of six generations, harsh in description. It was never soft, barely hopeful. But it brought me to a place I had never been before, a place where a young girl might choose to have all her teeth removed, just because they might rot one day, a place where love and food and procreation and religion are salty and difficult, harsh as the coldest sea. I could barely keep up at times, I flipped through pages looking again for character names, and at times I winced at events that repulsed or offended me, but I never, ever lost my awe at the quality of Crummey's writing. Galore is terrific and terrifying, an incredible read.

The idea of a man found alive in the body of a whale seems very magical and intriguing which is why this book seemed to draw me, but it didn't do a thing for me once I actually opened it and started to read. There are so many characters in this story and so much switching from one to the other, I found it difficult to really get to know any of them on a deep level. Who was Judah Devine? Was he man or beast or part of both worlds?

The characters jumped from being born and christened in the *Christening Tree,* to having lots of sex, to reproducing and then dying...it seemed some of them did this in a matter of pages. We get snips of who and what they are, but no in depth character study or flowing run down of their complete, intimate lives. This felt unnerving to me; it was a bit shallow and superficial for my tastes. I want to know everything there is to know about a character and I want to know how and what they feel in different situations. I could not sink my teeth into this story. It was more like a mild, continuous toothache.

The only mystical issue this book held for me is that I could not keep my mind focused on reading it. It felt like being in a very light sleep and never, ever getting into that deep, unconscious REM cycle which heals us every night. It left me cloudy and a bit dizzy with no explanation. Not recommended.