Sweetland
Michael Crummey, 2015
Liveright Publishing
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780871407900
Summary
The epic tale of an endangered Newfoundland community and the struggles of one man determined to resist its extinction.
The scarcely populated town of Sweetland rests on the shore of a remote Canadian island. Its slow decline finally reaches a head when the mainland government offers each islander a generous resettlement package—the sole stipulation being that everyone must leave.
Fierce and enigmatic Moses Sweetland, whose ancestors founded the village, is the only one to refuse. As he watches his neighbors abandon the island, he recalls the town’s rugged history and its eccentric cast of characters. Evoking The Shipping News, Michael Crummey—one of Canada’s finest novelists—conjures up the mythical, sublime world of Sweetland’s past amid a stormbattered landscape haunted by local lore.
As in his critically acclaimed novel Galore, Crummey masterfully weaves together past and present, creating in Sweetland a spectacular portrait of one man’s battle to survive as his environment vanishes around him. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 18, 1965
• Where—Buchans, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
• Raised—Wabush, Labrador
• Education—B.A., Memorial University (Newfoundland); M.A., Queens University (Ontario)
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in St. John, Newfoundland and Labrador
Michael Crummeyis a Canadian poet and writer. His fourth novel, Sweetland, was published in 2015.
Born in Buchans, Newfoundland and Labrador, Crummey grew up there and in Wabush, Labrador, where he moved with his family in the late 1970s.
He began to write poetry while studying at Memorial University in St. John's, where he received a B.A. in English in 1987. He completed a M.A. at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1988, then dropped out of the Ph.D. program to pursue his writing career. Crummey returned to St. John's in 2001.
Writing and awards
Since first winning Memorial University's Gregory J. Power Poetry Contest in 1986, Crummey has continued to receive accolades for his poetry and prose.
♦ In 1994, he became the first winner of the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for young unpublished writers.
♦ Arguments with Gravity (1996), his first volume pof poetry, won the Writer's Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Poetry.
♦ Hard Light (1998), his second collection, was nominated for the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award in 1999. 1998 also saw the publication
♦ A 1998 collection of short stories, Flesh and Blood, won Crummey a nomination for the Journey Prize.
♦ Crummey's debut novel, River Thieves (2001) became a Canadian bestseller, winning the Thomas Head Raddall Award, the Winterset Award for Excellence in Newfoundland Writing, and the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Choice Award. It was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was long-listed for the IMPAC Award.
♦ His second novel, The Wreckage (2005), was longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award.
♦ His third novel Galore (2009) shortlisted for the 2011 IMPAC Award.
Crummey's writing often draws on the history and landscape of Newfoundland and Labrador. The poems and prose in Hard Light are inspired by the stories of his father and other relatives, and the short stories in Flesh and Blood take place in the fictional mining community of Black Rock, which strongly resembles Buchans.
Crummey's novels in particular can be described as historical fiction. River Thieves details the contact and conflict between European settlers and the last of the Beothuk in the early 19th century, including the capture of Demasduwit. The Wreckage tells the story of young Newfoundland soldier Wish Fury and his beloved Sadie Parsons during and after World War II.
Crummey also research and wrote the 2014 National Film Board of Canada multimedia short film 54 Hours on the 1914 Newfoundland Sealing Disaster, co-directed by Paton Francis and Bruce Alcock. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/25/2015.)
Book Reviews
Impetuous and imperious, Moses Sweetland is an extraordinary, beautifully realized character, and the supporting cast—including Queenie Coffin, a chain-smoking romance-novel addict who hasn’t left her house in four decades; and the feral Priddle brothers, "Irish twins" born 10 months apart—are scarcely less so. But Sweetland, Crummey’s finest novel yet, reaches its mythic and mesmerizing heights only after the others depart, leaving Moses—a Newfoundland Robinson Crusoe who even encounters a Friday-like dog—alone on his eponymous island, bracing for a bitter winter both seasonal and personal.
Macleans
(Starred review.) Sweetland is both a place—a small island off Newfoundland—and a person—Moses Sweetland—and both have seen better times. The provincial government is offering resettlement money to Sweetland residents, but only if everyone agrees to leave.... Crummey.... [concludes] the book in a way that recalls Aristotle’s maxim from the Poetics: the best endings find a way to be both surprising and inevitable.
Publishers Weekly
Winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Canada, Crummey sets his new work on a sparsely populated Canadian island. Now the government has offered to resettle folks from the island's one town, Sweetland, provided that everyone agrees to leave. The holdout is Moses Sweetland, whose ancestors settled the town.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) On the small fictional island of Sweetland, just south of Newfoundland, a former lighthouse keeper becomes the last man standing when he refuses to accept a government resettlement package—much to everyone's exasperation.... Through its crusty protagonist, Crummey's shrewd, absorbing novel tells us how rich a life can be, even when experienced in the narrowest of physical confines.
Kirkus Reviews
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