Book Review: Galore by Michael Crummey

Title: Galore
Author: Michael Crummey
Publisher: Other Press
Publication Date: March 29, 2011
Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-1590514344
Genre: Historical Fiction

From the Publisher:

When a whale beaches itself on the shore of the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, the last thing any of the townspeople expect to find inside it is a man, silent and reeking of fish, but remarkably alive. The discovery of this mysterious person, soon christened Judah, sets the town scrambling for answers as its most prominent citizens weigh in on whether he is man or beast, blessing or curse, miracle or demon. Though Judah is a shocking addition, the town of Paradise Deep is already full of unusual characters. King-me Sellers, self-appointed patriarch, has it in for an inscrutable woman known only as Devine’s Widow, with whom he has a decades-old feud. Her granddaughter, Mary Tryphena, is just a child when Judah washes ashore, but finds herself tied to him all her life in ways she never expects. Galore is the story of the saga that develops between these families, full of bitterness and love, spanning two centuries.
With Paradise Deep, award-winning novelist Michael Crummey imagines a realm where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is impossible to discern. Sprawling and intimate, stark and fantastical, Galore is a novel about the power of stories to shape and sustain us.

My Review:

Galore by Michael Crummey gives a fictional historical account of life in Newfoundland, namely in the outports, as readers learn of the challenges and conflicts of the Sellers and Devine families.  Crummey expertly takes readers to Paradise Deep and The Gut in the period spanning the 1800’s through the early 1900’s.  As readers learn of the experiences of young Mary Tryphena Devine, Jabez Trim, and the Woundy brothers, Crummey employs magical realism, in literary contrast to the very real, subsistence-type lifestyle that outporters in this part of Canada experienced.  Over several generations, and in a non-linear timeline, we learn of the rivalries among the families, the unreal stories that were passed from one generation to the next and the skepticism surrounding the legitimacy of the stories told as magical realism.  Crummey has crafted a truly exceptional novel in his multigenerational historical look at life in small villages in Newfoundland.  As I knew very little of the lives lead by peoples in this region of Canada over the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, I can say Crummey effectively brought me into the period through his extraordinarily well-crafted prose.  Galore is the first novel I have read of this author, and I shall be looking to read some of his earlier works and would recommend Galore to historical fiction fans and think this book would be an intriguing choice for discussion groups.

About the Author:

Michael Crummey is a poet and storyteller, and the author of the critically acclaimed novels River Thieves and The Wreckage and the short story collection Flesh and Blood. He has been nominated for the Giller Prize, the IMPAC Dublin Award, and Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Canada for Galore. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

I received a complimentary ARC of Galore by Michael Crummey from Other Press to offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.