This is a treat of a story by a Canadian author who is as wonderful as he is great. His writing is a nice red glass wine beside the fireplace on a cold winter’s night.
This novel is sprawling and intimate, fantastical and true. It is a novel about the power of stories to shape and sustain us.
An intricate family saga and a love story spanning two centuries, Michael Crummey’s new novel is a portrait of the improbably medieval world of rural Newfoundland, where the line between the read and the otherworldly is impossible to distinguish.
This story is about a mute and naked stranger who arrive n Paradise Deep in the belly of a whale. A widow’s family is haunted by the curse she placed as a young woman on the local merchant.
A defrocked priest takes extraordinary measures to exorcise a murderer’s ghost. A charismatic political reformer with a devastating secret sets out to save the country from itself.
The story is set in a realm somewhere between the stark coastal landscape and a world of superstition and myth.
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by: Irene S. Roth
Irene Roth's Canadian Book Review Blog 