Custodian of Paradise (Johnston) - Book Reviews

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