![]() Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News started a small feeding frenzy of Newfoundland-inspired prose, but her descriptions of the geography carried a super-stylized Cézanne-ishness that kept the island and its inhabitants at a distance. He has successfully mined his home province for material before (he’s the author of three books of poetry and a collection of short stories), but River Thieves marks a real achievement in the upward trajectory of this still-young writer and the literature of Newfoundland. The household’s barely formulated hostilities and passions are mirrored and refracted through any number of cultural groups forced to share an unforgiving landscape: English, French, Irish, Mi’qmaq, Beothuk, St.John’s “quality,” the dirt poor of the outports, and the British Navy all collide and are each consumed by the riptides of history.Ĭrummey was born in Buchans, Newfoundland, grew up there and in Wabush, Labrador, and now lives in St. Author Michael Crummey doesn’t stop there. In an isolated outpost household, a domestic triangle of simmering, psycho-sexual tension threatens to erupt into violence. European settlement is well under way and the Beothuk have entered into their twilight on this Earth. The scene is Newfoundland’s desolate north shore about 200 years ago. ![]()
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May 2023
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