The Custodian of Paradise
Wayne Johnston, 2006
Knopf Canada / W.W. Norton & Co.
582 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385495431
Summary
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Wayne Johnston’s breakthrough novel based on the life of Newfoundland’s first premier, Joe Smallwood, was published internationally and earned him nominations for the highest fiction prizes in Canada. One of the most highly praised elements of the novel is the character Sheilagh Fielding, with whom Smallwood shares a lifelong love-hate relationship.
The Custodian of Paradise is a riveting narrative with Fielding at its heart. Fielding—advancing on middle age, hobbled by disfigurement and personal demons—is headed for Loreburn, a deserted island off the south coast of Newfoundland. She has borne a lifetime of estrangement and heartbreak by setting herself apart from the rest of St. John’s society. By cultivating her isolation, she’s been able to write, both in her journals and for the Telegram. By skirting Prohibition laws, she’s also been able to dull the pain of her early years. Alone she remains—except for the mysterious stranger she calls her Provider.
As Fielding revisits her articles, letters and journals, we are swept up in her tumultuous life’s journey and the mystery of this Provider’s identity. From the downtrodden streets of New York’s immigrant neighbourhoods to the sanatorium where she fights TB, from the remote workers’ shacks of the Bonavista rail line to the underbelly of wartime St. John’s, the Provider seems to have devoted himself to charting Fielding’s every move and to sending her maddeningly cryptic letters about his role in her life. Yet he has also protected her at times. While she fears that he may have followed her to Loreburn, she fears even more that he may not be able to find her there.
With The Custodian of Paradise, Wayne Johnston continues his masterful exploration of life in pre-Confederation Newfoundland, and of the powerful forces that give rise to great character—individualism, circumstance, and secrecy; memory, loss, and regret. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 22, 1958
• Where—Goulds, Newfoundland, Canada
• Education—B.A., memorial University of
Newfoundland; M.A. University of New
Brunswick
• Awards—Charles Taylor Prize for Nonfiction
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Ontario
Wayne Johnston was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. After a brief stint in pre-Med, Wayne obtained a BA in English from Memorial University. He worked as a reporter for the St. John's Daily News before deciding to devote himself full-time to writing.
En route to being published, Wayne earned an MA (Creative Writing) from the University of New Brunswick. Then he got off to a quick start. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, published when he was just 27 years old, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel award for the best first novel published in the English language in Canada in that year.
Subsequent books consistently received critical praise and increasing public attention. The Divine Ryans was adapted to the silver screen in a production starring Academy Award winner Pete Postlethwaite—Wayne wrote the screenplay. Baltimore's Mansion, a memoir dealing with his grandfather, his father and Wayne himself was tremendously well received and won the most prestigious prize for creative non-fiction awarded in Canada—the Charles Taylor Prize.
Both The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York spent extended periods of time on bestseller lists in Canada and have also been published in the US, Britain, Germany, Holland, China and Spain. Colony was identified by the Globe and Mail newspaper as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever produced (for both fiction and non-fiction).
Wayne has always been something of a natural athlete—for example, he was once part of a championship ball-hockey team. Luckily (in retrospect) when he was still in the formative stages of considering future career paths, his ice hockey equipment, which was carefully stowed in a garbage bag in the basement was accidentally put out with the trash. The world of literature benefited; is is possible that the National Hockey League lost a star in the process? (From the author's website & Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Biting wit and brilliant puns.... Worth the attention of anyone who delights in Johnston's imagination and the riches of the English language.
Ottawa Citizen
Marks perhaps his greatest achievement in conveying the emotional state and psychology of tackling one's past and culture.
Telegraph-Journal (Canada)
Written with Johnston's accustomed verve and humour.
National Post (Canada)
Meet Fielding. The heroine of Wayne Johnston's sensitive, beautifully written new novel is far too self-aware for her own good and, for that matter, far too tall for it.... [T]his is a far more somber novel than The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and a less satisfying one, too. The earlier book had the sweep, ambition and narrative drive of Robertson Davies, the great Canadian master who clearly influenced its plot; The Custodian of Paradise is lyrical to the point of languor, and the revelations take their good time in unfolding. Those who have long adored Fielding, of course, will be unable to resist this stately, flawed book; those who have not yet met her should rush to pick up The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and let its riches warm them in ways no hooch ever could.
Washington Post
Sheilagh Fielding—a striking, unconventional, six-foot-three Newfoundland woman with a limp—returns from prolific Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams for this highly atmospheric sequel. Near the end of WWII, Fielding (as she is known), a notorious St. John's columnist, holes up on the nearby deserted island of Loreburn after her mother dies and leaves her a small inheritance. There, Fielding senses the presence of her mysterious "Provider," who has shadowed her all her life and whom she has never met face-to-face. As Fielding tells her story—abandoned by her mother at six; raised by a father who insinuates she's not his—Fielding's Provider draws closer to her solitary retreat. But Fielding has long kept another secret: she gave birth to twins at the age of 15, who were raised as her half-siblings by her mother in New York City. Johnston's descriptive prose can be exhilarating, from the windswept island to a dingy Manhattan, and he has a sure hand with historical nuggets. There's little tension over the 500-plus pages, and the denouement (her father's identity; her children's fate) is overblown. But Fielding is a fascinating character: she courts her own estrangement as much as she is tormented by it.
Publishers Weekly
Award-winning Canadian author Johnston's seventh novel, which builds on the story he began in The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, opens against the backdrop of World War II, when a gifted woman of great wit and inner strength seeks refuge on a deserted island off the coast of Newfoundland. An only child haunted since age six by her mother's abandonment, Sheilagh Fielding was raised in the city of St. John's by her physician father, a man still devastated by his wife's departure and tormented by the suspicion that Sheilagh is not his offspring. Further anguish occurs when, at age 16, Sheilagh becomes pregnant and is sent to stay with her estranged mother, now remarried and living in New York City. Eventually, Sheilagh returns to St. John's and lives an eccentric life that includes writing a satiric newspaper column and drinking heavily. When a mysterious man calling himself her "Provider" claims to know both her and her mother's secrets, Sheilagh slowly learns the truth. With humor and pathos, Johnston unravels the story in fascinating layers and a compelling tone, revealing how mistakes, betrayal, and revenge can plague people's entire lives. Recommended for all library fiction collections.
—Maureen Neville
Library Journal
Suspend your disbelief and sit back for a gripping read in the vein of a nineteenth-century romantic novel but featuring a twentieth-century woman. Feisty, iconoclastic, and extremely ironic, Sheilagh Fielding was originally introduced in Johnston's award-winning historical novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (1999). There she was featured as the fictitious companion of Joey Smallwood, first premier of Newfoundland. Now, however, she is the star, and her story is a riveting one.... [The book] would make for a rousing discussion in a book club. —Maureen O'Connor
Booklist
One of contemporary fiction’s most memorable characters...Sheilagh Fielding....retreat[s], during the waning days of WWII, to the uninhabited island of Loreburn, off Newfoundland’s western coast...where she...is forced into a confrontation with the ghosts of her past that even this consummate pessimist could not have foreseen. Johnston may be the best of all the 21st century’s neo-Victorian novelists, and this riveting three-decker is not to be missed.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Though she’s from a “quality” family, not “scruff,” Sheilagh lives in rundown places like the boarding house on New York’s Lower East Side, the shack on the Bonavista line, and the Cochrane Street Hotel Why do you think she does this? Talk as well about the class differences that rule St. John’s and how they affect Johnston’s main characters.
2. Why is Sheilagh so abrasive to others, even to the extent of hurting and pushing away those she loves? Does Sheilagh take pride in the persona she has created for herself, and in her local infamy? Or is it truly just a regrettable consequence of being herself?
3. Sheilagh’s Provider writes to her of making a game of devising synonyms for “God,” including “custodian of paradise.” He said to his delegate, “We are all three of us, you and I and Miss Fielding, custodians...withdrawn from the world to preserve, to keep inviolate, something that would otherwise be lost.” What are these characters preserving, and are they right or misguided in doing so? In what ways is the Provider playing God?
4. How does the backdrop of the Second World War permeate The Custodian of Paradise? Even at Loreburn, it’s often at the forefront of Sheilagh’s mind. How is Newfoundland affected by the war (e.g. considering its strategic location, and the great losses of its young men)? Is there a comparison to be made between going off to war and going out on the seal hunts?
5. Throughout the novel are references to Sheilagh’s need to be indoors, to her late-night walks, to her need for “sanctuary.” Discuss the importance of sanctuary and isolation in this novel, both physical and mental.
6. Why does the Provider keep his identity and his relationship with Sheilagh’s mother a secret, yet write such cryptic letters, for two decades?
7. From the missives the Provider sends to Sheilagh, to the Forgeries she publishes, to the scrap of paper reading only “Their names are David and Sarah,” correspondence serves as the backbone of communication in this novel. Discuss the ways in which letters and notes guide the main characters. How does writing relate to truth (or fiction) in the novel? To memory?
8. At the time this novel is set, Newfoundland has yet to join Confederation, and has a remoteness from the rest of Canada that is both geographical and psychological. Talk about how Newfoundland is portrayed, and how Fielding and Smallwood feel about their home.
9. Is there any significance to names such as the S.S. Newfoundland (the sealing boat Smallwood travels on) or the Newfoundland Hotel (where Smallwood and Fielding stay in New York)?
10. Johnston has said that one of the main themes explored in this story is “the attempt to overcome the temptation of vengeance.” How do Sheilagh, the Provider, and even Dr. Fielding fare in their efforts?
11. An entirely fictional character, Sheilagh Fielding made her first appearance in Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, his renowned novel based on real-life political figure Joe Smallwood. If you’ve read the earlier novel, discuss the differing views of and narrative roles of Smallwood and Fielding. How has this novel enriched your memory of Colony?
12. As Sheilagh leaves New York for the first time, she writes, “It is as if, when my children were born, my soul followed theirs into the world and now is lost. It seems there is nothing left of me but matter, mortal matter.” How is this attitude reflected in her life afterwards? Does anything change when she meets David?
13. In the final chapter, on her journey back to wartime St. John’s and to society, Sheilagh thinks, “I am returning to a war that I have never really left,” and even calls her Provider’s apartment in New York a “book-lined trench.” In what ways do Sheilagh and others view life as a battle to be fought, or as a war to be survived?
(Questions issued by publisher.)