Customer Reviews

Sylvanus Now: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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.

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.

There are times when reading this book when it feels as if you are immersed almost in a song, the language, the place, the people, their mental life is almost lyrical. I enjoyed the reading of this book, regardless of the story. But, the story was good too. The book traces the decline of the fishing stock off the coast of Newfoundland while simultaneously writing a love story. This is not your typical love story but it's a powerful one somewhat like the landscape, cold, distant and yet enveloping and always present and necessary. Hard to describe.

I was reading this book simultaneously with another book (Baltimore's Mansion or something like that) also about Newfoundland and the difficulties of confederation (I never knew that Newfoundland was once a "nation" and that it voted to become part of Canada). Reading the two books at the same time also provided some historical context for what was happening in each.

The decline of the fisheries is devestating and you can't help but wonder how it is that this can happen to seaport after seaport without learning from the experience. Entire towns disappear when the fishing is gone. And yet nothing is done to prevent or slow the decline.

But what makes the story so lovely is the story of the people: Of Sylvanus the main character who is a lone fisherman and must either adapt to the changes in fishing or find something else to do. THis is not an easy choice but it is one that he eventually makes in a very realistic way (he does not allow his pride to interfere with his need to support his family). Of Adelaide, who always wanted something more and something far removed from fishing and mothering but who ends up marrying Sylvanus and losing her first three children. She suffers this loss and feels responsible for it for not being more accepting and forgiving of others. And it takes the course of the whole book for her to forgive herself (and, again this is very realistic). Eva, Sylanus's mother who watched her husband and oldest son die at the feet of the cliff where she lives when they return from fishing in a storm and who has to watch her other three sons go out into that same water over and over again.

I loved Sylvanus Now. Loved every heart-wrenching page. I loved that it made me perspire with anticipation: made me actually taste the bile and salt young Addie encounters in her treacherous work with the "flakes."


In fact, the story of fishermen and fisheries ----specificially one fisherman and his trapped wife---were a representation of the changing way of life. After the Second World War with large international vessels populating and ravaging the waters surrounding Newfoundland, residents of the outports were forced into a world crass and new. Gone were the days of slaving only to the Mother ( the great ocean whose bountiful fruit provided industry and survival in primitive form); gone the oral tales and the language of sea and sky; of living from the land for the land; of appreciating a culture and tradition dating back centuries.


The world sped up and swept Sylvanus, a proud fisherman, and all of the outport men of his ilk with it.


I was thoroughly outraged by what was presented in the novel. Outraged that somehow the sea became free reign for modernization; machination; crude infiltration of factories and technology to rid the water of what Sylvanus and his family had carefully wrought for generations.


The Mother becomes less and less fruitful as Sylvanus' skiff bopped over waves once plentiful of food and promise and the sea foam became a haunting, watery grave for bloated fish carcasses: an emblem of man's extremes.



As a paradox, Sylvanus' proud wife Addie suffers numerous stillbirths: almost as if the glassy water surrounding the port is offering a mirror in which her plight is reflected.


A powerful and gripping story of love and loss.


As turbulent as Sylvanus' relationship with the sea and the new factory-life sprouting around the province, so is his relationship with his beloved Adelaide

Their courtship is tame and lovely: a young fisherman who has worked endless hours to buy a suit: (who, because of this revered garment, is hired to stand in at weddings and funerals to loan respectability) in order to woo and marry a girl pursues her and attempts to show her the poetry in the region she disdains: beauty and promise and a house of her own in a region she longs to leave for a life as a missionary.




Sylvanus watches the seemingly haughty Addie at a party one night; her lithe frame erect, her nose stuck in the air. Sylvanus spends the entirety of the novel attempting to make good on his promise to provide her everything she needs. Addie accepts and, though the two rift at cross-purposes throughout the novel, there persistence and stamina reminded me of the locals who will not be moved by industry or modernization.



This novel has such a huge scope it is hard to condense and compartmentalize it here for you.




All you need to know is that I recommend it ever so highly. I loved each page and held on for dear life.

I finished it the day I started and, though somewhat emotionally distressed, was better for the profound experience.


Donna Morrissey: I love you! Damn! You can write a book.

If I were the ranking type, I would have ranked Donna Morrissey's
third book Sylvanus Now as her best, but I'm not, so I will begin my
review by saying that it is absolutely brilliant. Those of you who are
fortunate enough to have read her first two books (Kit's Law and
Downhill Chance) already know what an insightful, sensitive and
exquisite writer Morrissesy is (and those who haven't read the first
two books - please go, buy and read them - now -, you'll be forever
thankful to me for this suggestion). Well, turns out, Sylvanus Now is
even a fuller book than her first two. While, as before, Morrissey
reaches into the deepest folds of her characters' psyches, and
presents their human struggles to us in her most real, and near
poetic, prose, this time she also presents a drama of huge
proportions - the still unfolding saga of the Newfoundland (and
Atlantic) fishery -, through the eyes and the minds of those who have
been there to foresee, warn, and then helplessly witness (as
everyone who counted dismissed their warnings), and live with the
devastating consequences of the destruction of the - their - fishery
that sustained them, and that they had nurtured, for centuries.
If you are looking for a book to take you away, and bring you back to
earth, at the same time, Sylvanus Now is your book. You will fall in
love, once again, with Donna Morrissey's powerful writing, and be
captivated with her characters and her plot. Another superb gift to us
from this exceptionally gifted writer.

I agree with Beverly, this is a wonderful work. Friends from NL introduced us to Donna Morrisey and we picked this up as soon as we saw her name on the cover. Although the text is apparently "easy-going", I have never read so quickly; I just could not put the book down. I completely identified with the eldest daughter syndrome and the need to escape the overwhelming noise and confusion of large families, the backbreaking, tedious work for others and the powerlessness of women to be self-dtermining. Morrissey brilliantly parallels Adelaide's intelligence and desire for knowledge and solitude, and her subsequent feelings of inadequacy and failure with Sylvanus'confidence in his knowledge of the sea, the Mother, his sense of worth in work well done and his subsequent powerlessness in the face of modernity and destruction of his immediate environment. We find ourselves hoping for a specific resolution to their problems as they work their way out of their respective solitudes to make a joint decision. So satisfying and completely true to character all the way through. I can't wait to read her two previous novels.

Ms. Morrissey won me over with Kit's Law. Downhill Chance made her writing a part of my thoughts and Sylvanus Now made her writing part of my heart.
Ms. Morrissey's ability to capture the Newfoundland dialect is absolutely incredible and the words in-between are nothing short of genuis.
I felt, at times, I was seeing the marrow of the bones of Addie and Syllie, and Eva and Suze. I could see their weather-beaten faces, smell the odour of fish and toil, taste the salt. I could feel the sting of the salty fish-water in the lines of my own hands when Addie and Suze were turning the cod and I shivered with the dampness and coldness of mother ocean when Sylvanus jigged for cod.
I have long been a reader of the great literature that is coming out of Newfoundland. This is that literature at it's very best.
This book should be a mandatory read for high-schoolers. A history book that you can actually feel.
Doesn't get any better than this!
Thank you Donna Morrissey. Keep writing -- faster.