3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Third brilliant novel, May 10, 2006
This review is from: Sylvanus Now: A Novel (Paperback)
Do read this novel. Then buy Kit's Law and then Downhill Chance. There is no better way to learn about a place and way of life that lies hidden from view, tucked away carefully in history's dustbin. A forgotten people and way of life comes to life under Morrissey's deft hand. I can't explain the slow unfolding of this novel's plot without giving away too much, so you'll have to take the following as a small taste of the dish in store.
Third in the Morrissey opus, Sylvanus Now has the same quality of place as the other two novels have. Place is so strong in her novels that Morrissey gives the reader a virtual mind painting in which to set her characters. My mind's eye watched as Sylvanus walked to the beach to launch his little boat, had a bird's eye view as he jigged for cod, and stared blankly at the windowless wall of Sylvanus' and Adelaide's cottage (you will find out why.
One of the remarkable things about this novel is that it can be read as a political novel; but in the best sense. That is, the politics comes out through the lives of the characters rather than through prose. Here the politics is about how government policy affects people's lives, and especially when the policy is wrong-headed. But we don't see this happen - we feel it happen through the characters.
While the novel is named for Sylvanus, it is Adelaide who steals the novel. Sylvanus is rooted to his fishing, his place and his way of life. He wants no more but to live out his life as his ancestors have done - jigging cod in the good weather and working lumber in the cold. But Adelaide has intelligence that yeans for more out of life. She wanted to be a missionary and travel the world. She wanted to stay in school. But it was not to be and she was forced to help dry the fish on the flakes, and work in the fish processing plant.
Sylvanus sees her through the window at a dance. She is to us what she is to Sylvanus at first; and slowly we come to see her as she really is. She is difficult. She is resentful. But she also loyal and true. But she is more aware than Sylvanus can understand. She sees that his hatred of the new ways is eating him away from the inside. And she has her own demons to battle.
A particularly heartfelt character is Eva, Sylvanus' mother. As we learn, late in the novel, about her life, we come to picture the deep roots that these people have in this little fishing community on the banks of a wild sea.
It is the heartbreaking moments scattered through the book that make this lyrical novel soar far above the ordinary. One must reassess one's thoughts about the heroic life. These people and their time are heroic but voiceless if not for Morrissey. She gives them voice and songs to sing so that they cannot be forgotten.
Suze is a busybody and unstoppable talker who Adelaide finds a nuisance. But it is Suze who is her best friend, who will tell her what she won't hear and forgives all slights. I came to appreciate Suze slowly as does Adelaide.
The slow courting of Sylvanus and Adelaide is a wonderful section of the novel. He approaches her as one does a bird - slowly, holding treats but never forcing them. Adelaide's mother, Florrie, sees nothing but trouble from her children and demands they accord their lives with her will. We all know mothers like that and all recoil from them. The more they demand and harp, the less they get their way and their children cannot wait to leave.
But don't think this is all serious and sad. Morrissey's wit is present throughout in the colorful expressions used by the characters and her loving if at times affectionately ironic look at them. All of the characters in this novel are true. This is a first rate book.
Chuck Schwager
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Who reigns in a household of shrieking, squalling babies? Misery.", December 18, 2005
A fishing village on the Newfoundland coast is the scene of an unusual pairing, where a harsh landscape fuels the characters' daily existence. Fisherman Sylvanus Now is content, lacking only a wife, the object of his desire the beautiful, dissatisfied Adelaide. Such easy compatibility with her environment is foreign to Adelaide, trapped in a cycle of poverty, surrounded by squalling siblings, her future promising only back-breaking, soul-stifling labor, her beauty sure to fray under the rugged demands of survival. Once education is denied her, Adelaide is faced with rapidly diminishing options. When Sylvanus shows up at Adelaide's door, she knows a moment of joy, taking in his handsome face and elegant suit, but his occupation is betrayed by the rubber boots and bowed legs of the fisherman, her brief interest diluted by reality. Sylvanus asks Adelaide to go with him to Cooney Arm, his home: "Cooney Arm with its handful of blood relatives, the scattered sheep and the odd rhubarb patch was never a place she cared to visit." Leaving her fecund mother's jumble of screaming babies behind, Adelaide metaphorically shuts the door on her present and walks into the future with Sylvanus.
Week by week, Sylvanus gentles Adelaide, urging her to accept his offering of self and hearth. As a girl, Adelaide put all of her faith in God's protection and she will be sorely tested in her marriage, even her husband's love insufficient to shield her from her particular burdens. This once arrogant young woman engages in an inner journey against unanticipated odds, surrounded by the wild beauty of the coast, where nature rules the bounty or lack of her life: "She pasted life around her as if it were wallpaper, but then had scrambled into hiding after it started crimping and peeling and falling in strips around her." Both Sylvanus and Adelaide become intimate with the fear that takes up stealthy residence in their hearts, clinging to each other to survive.
This errant coastline seems centuries removed from progress in the 1950's, small fishing fleets gradually replaced by the massive ships whose nets cull the ocean, delivering their quarry to the canneries for immediate processing. Seduced by government assurances, local fishermen invest in liners to harvest their catch, sheltered from the harrying of inclement weather in factories, where women stand on their feet for long shifts, hands frozen, all for a regular paycheck and a few well-deserved modern conveniences. Most are eager to cast aside daily drudgery, positive that any change will enrich the tedium and hardship of their days. Couched in the idiomatic speech of the Newfoundland coast, the author mines local customs, the changing tides of the fishing industry, Sylvanus' unwavering devotion and the incredible spirit of a woman coming to terms with destiny.
Absolutely nothing about this novel is predictable, save the direction of the fishing industry and the inevitable displacement of families. As deeply reflective as Harriett Arnow's The Dollmaker, a harrowing tale of World War II industrialization and the fragmenting of the American family, Sylvanus Now is destined to become a classic, the characters trapped by economic limitations and diminishing dreams. Moving beyond the obvious dictates of plot, Morrissey catapults her characters into complex relationships, as a centuries-old way of life crumbles before the inevitable onslaught of progress. These protagonists grapple with their inner demons, finding salvation in the uncharted territory of flawed humanity, loss and forgiveness. Luan Gaines/ 2005.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good fishin', April 24, 2006
Review by Nan Lincoln
The Bar Harbor Times
Like the Harry Potter fans of today, when I was a kid I eagerly awaited the next installment of C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia." Actually, there were a bunch of writers I wished I could phone and say, "hurry up!"
As an adult, there are only a few authors who inspire that same "Oh goody!!" response when I see one of their new books appear in the bookstore or library shelves - one of them, Patrick O'Brian, recently died. Philip Roth qualifies; Louise Erdrich, Ann Tyler, Joyce Carol Oates are others, and more recently added to that list is Donna Morrissey.
Ms. Morrissey's first two books, "Kit's Law" and "Downhill Chance," not only made me fall in love with her compelling writing style, but with Newfoundland, as well. Her latest novel, "Sylvanus Now," has continued that love affair.
This time, her story is set between 1949 and 1960. It is an era of enormous change for the inhabitants of Cooney Arm and Ragged Rock, two hardscrabble little villages on the shores of Newfoundland's fishing banks. Those changes are reflected in the lives of two people, a young fisherman named Sylvanus Now, and the girl of his dreams, Adelaide.
"Syllie" first spies his Adelaide through a window at a party, spurning the callow young men who are asking her to dance. Too shy to even enter the room, the boy nevertheless falls in love with the girl in the window, and eventually works up the courage to start courting her.
The courtship of Adelaide is something akin to taming a skittish wild animal. A star student before she was forced to leave school and go to work, salting fish, Adelaide once had far grander plans for herself than becoming the wife of a lowly fisherman. Although her dreams have been dashed by harsh reality, she resents it mightily. And what's more, as the eldest of seven or eight siblings she has a horror of babies. Not exactly an easy choice for our young suitor. But Sylvanus is uncommonly patient and gentle with his proud, oddball sweetheart, and eventually wins her heart.
But that's just the beginning. While this is indeed a love story, it is also a story of hardship and loss - for this young couple and for the community. The welfare of both depends open the fishing industry, and since the end of World War II sea changes are occurring so swiftly these tradition-bound Newfoundlanders can't keep up. First come the big trawlers with their mammoth gillnets that can't recognize the difference between a spawning female and a tom cod. Handline fishermen like Sylvanus Now are a dying breed. Even the women's work of salting the fish for shipment overseas is becoming obsolete with the soaring demand for fresh-canned fish. The women are pulled from the salting racks along the shore and lined up in the newly built processing plants. And even the plant's days are numbered when the behemoth factory ships arrive, not only scooping up every living thing in the ocean into their nets, but icing it all onboard to be sold at the fresh fish markets around the world.
Sylvanus notes with mounting disgust and horror the depletion of the fish stocks. Once, he could jig a boatload of cod in a few hours, it now takes days, and the fish are getting smaller and smaller. Still, he stubbornly refuses to change with the times and take a job aboard one of the bigger boats. The handline he catches his cod and haddock with is like an major artery connecting him with his energy source - the sea.
Ms. Morrissey has done some serious research for this book, and readers will learn more about catching, gutting, preserving and marketing fish than they probably ever wanted to know. Certainly more than Adelaide ever wanted to know.
"Choosing one of the higher faggots where the fish were already a bit dried and not too soggy with brine, Adelaide cautiously picked one up by the tail, grimacing at the coldness of the pickled flesh. It slipped out of her fingers. Picking it up again, she laid it across her arm, grateful for the long sleeves of her blouse, and held the thing arm's length from her chest."
On the other hand, Sylvanus's encounters with fish are some of the happiest moments in his life.
"Whoa, now, who do we have here?" he asked in astonishment as he pulled the forty pounder half out of the water, the brown of its back glistening wet its belly creamy milk and swollen with roe. A mother fish. Rarely would she feed off a jigger, busy as she was bottom feeding and readying herself for spawning. Reverently he unhooked the jigger from the mouth of the quietly struggling fish and watched the sun catch the last glimmer of her gills as she dove back into the deep the sack of roe in her belly unscathed. He felt proud. The ocean's bounty she was and woe to he who desecrated the mother's womb."
Ms. Morrissey's writing is spare without being dry or colorless, much like the dialogue and idioms spoken by her characters and the rocky, weather-scoured landscape they live in.
Inevitably, one is drawn to compare Ms Morrissey with that other great Newfoundland writer, Annie Proulx. It's been a while since I read "The Shipping News," but when I recall scenes from it I picture dark buildings, wet pavement, black ice, iron hulls, gray smoke, chapped faces and wet wool. While her stories also tend to be dark, Ms. Morrissey's writing evokes a much lighter palette - I think of bright colors that have been bleached out by the sun and salt.
The other thing I like about Ms. Morrissey is that, thus far, like my old friend Mr. Lewis, she keeps returning to the same place. Although the main characters change, one gets the feeling that the folks we met in her last books live just across the way or down the street. They may be a little rough around the edges, b'ye, but it's a good neighborhood to return to.
My only complaint about this book is that its publisher has brought the first American edition out in paperback, rather than give it a hardback run. When readers here finally discover Donna Morrissey, they are going to want good, solid copies of all her books for their libraries.
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