Wayne Johnston (1)Critiques

2.5 stars. Too long & ultimately dreary.

Child abuse, relationships, mental illness, family relationships

Percy was born with FSS (Famous Someone Syndrome), where his hands, feet, and lips are all oversized; he also has an extremely large wine-red/purple “stain” on his face. He lives in St. John’s, Nfld with his beautiful single mom and her boarder, who also teaches at Percy’s school. A frequent visitor to their house is his mom’s friend, Medina. He also realizes there will never be a girl/woman who will love him or have sex with him; he figures his only hope is his mother. The story follows Percy from about 5 years old to 15.

Ok, as distasteful as that is, the story itself wasn’t bad. Initially, it reminded me of John Irving. It was pretty slow, though. It did pick up for me as I continued on, so I temporarily thought I might rate is just a bit higher, until something at the end of the book brought my rating back down to “ok”. It was apparently set in the 1950s and 60s, but I don’t recall if that was explicitly stated in the book. There was some humour and plenty of criticism of the Catholic Church.

A tale of a sealer's son from Newfoundland at the turn of the

A tale set in late 1890's of a sealer's son from Newfoundland who meets a wealth man when they attend Princeton together. The story revolves around their relationship and betrayal by the wealthy man and how they continue to be in each other's lives to the detriment of both.½

I don't know what I just read and I don't know how I should feel about it. I don't even know if I really want to give three stars or if I want to give no stars at all. This story has me so confused. I feel embarrassed, ashamed, dirty, sad, angry. So do I give more stars since it made me feel so much? I just don't know. I hate this book. But sometimes I love this book. Most times I hate it.

I read this novel for a book club I belong to and the other night we all met online with the author. I hadn't finished reading the book at that point so I wasn't entirely sure how things were going to end up but I had a feeling it wasn't going to be good. I was going to comment on what a great job he, the author, did at creating such unlikeable characters but thankfully I didn't! I had no idea this novel is based on true events in his life! Now that I know, this story just seems even more terrible. The things that some people live through......I have no words.

I disliked every character except Wade. They all completely sickened me to the point where I got very angry. That evil son of a bitch Hans.....don't even get me started on him. Thinking back, I guess the characters were incredibly real to me since they elicited such a feeling of detest which is what the author was going for I suppose.

The poetry was maddening. I would read the poem in the chapter and then I couldn't get myself out of the rhythm. I had to keep reading and rereading just to make sense of it all. Did I mention that I hate poetry? This novel certainly was a journey!

I don't know if I should recommend this novel or not. It is not for the faint of heart. I guess you'll have to read it and see what you think. It is full of evil people and events and the poetry almost makes a mockery of it all. This is the hardest review I have written. I don't even know how to end this, so here it is.....I'm done. The end.

I decided not to finish this. Learning that one of the two central characters who was (in the book) a lifelong influence on Joey Smallwood, who "casts a haunting shadow over" (dust jacket blurb) Smallwood's entire life, is fictional? Deal breaker for me. It's confusing when you don't know enough solid history to disentangle fact and fiction and frustrating when after reading a whole book, wind up knowing less than when you started. I gave it a few chapters, but the depiction of Smallwood's brutal alcoholic father was so detailed with dialogue and incidents that surely must have been invented, that I decided I really didn't want to get any more uninformed about Newfoundland than I already am.

Also, after reading that, I cannot look at the Smallwood-on-railroad-tracks cover (Vintage/Random House edition) without reading it as COLONY OF UNREQUITED DRAMS.

Historical fiction about a young man, Devlin Stead, overcoming an ignominious start in life, being viewed as “odd,” but eventually leaving behind his difficult childhood to join polar expeditions.

I had read about the controversy of Frederick Cook having claimed to be the first to reach the North Pole, later discredited, and of his rivalry with Robert Peary. I thought this book might provide some clarity as to what had really happened; however, it did not. In the author’s notes at the end, it states: “While it draws from the historical record, its purpose is not to answer historical questions or settle historical controversies.”

The book contains beautiful language, particularly the descriptions of life in New York City at the turn of the 20th century and the stark seascapes of Newfoundland. For long stretches of time, I was not sure where the plot was headed and not much happens. At times it seemed a chore; however, the pace picks in the middle and continues to the finish.

Recommended to readers of Victorian novels or those that enjoy the history of exploration.

Favorite passages:
“What is really self-knowledge is often mistaken for self-doubt.”

“Follow your heart in all things. It is not infallible, but it is yours.”

“Nothing so reminds you like the sea that the enemy of life is not death but loneliness.”

“Sky. Wind. Light. Air. Cold. Grey. Far. Salt. Smell. Now all these words meant something they had never meant before, and the word sea contained them all.”

Wow! This is an amazing, epic story about four sisters and the family secret they carry. The writing is wonderful, with parts of the novel written in verse. The characters are complex and true to themselves.

Wade, an aspiring writer in Newfoundland meets Rachel at University and falls in love. As he becomes more involved with her, and moves to South Africa with her and her parents (who are returning after immigrating to Canada) he meets Rachel's three sisters and discover that, like Rachel, each is dysfunctional in some way. Wade struggles to understand his beloved, and slowly comes to understand the secret they are keeping.

This is one of my favourite books ever.

When Ned is 14-years old, he comes home from school to find no one home. This is unusual. It turns out both his parents have disappeared. The book follows Ned as an adult and looks back on his life without his parents in it. Sheilagh Fielding, a reporter and friend of Ned’s father, becomes a good friend to Ned. In 1949, when Newfoundland becomes a part of Canada, the last child born before that time is referred to as “The Last Newfoundlander”. Ned ends up adopting the orphan and also takes in the boy’s destitute aunt.

The book alternates between Sheilagh’s point of view and Ned’s (with a couple of chapters devoted to two other characters). I really have no interest in Sheilagh. She bores me and I don’t like her. Unfortunately, Ned’s missing-parents mystery really wasn’t touched on for most of the book, but we did come back to it at the end. That, of course for me, was the most interesting part of the book. So because of that, I found the start and end much more interesting than the rest of the book. Overall, I’m rating it ok, but it definitely picked up at the end, not only when Ned finally found out what happened, but what happened after that.

I listened to the audio, which had four different narrators. It was done well, although I still lost focus occasionally, but I don’t believe that was due to it being an audio book.

About three quarters of the way through the book I started really dislike this book. It seemed contrived, unbelievable and bordering sacrilegious. The last quarter things improved somewhat and the story was ok. To misquote Dr. Johnson worth reading perhaps but not going to read.½

It drug on in a few places. Overall a good story.

I have read most of Wayne Johnston’s novels and have enjoyed them all; those I have reviewed on my blog have all been given 4-star ratings. I was excited to receive a digital galley of The Mystery of Right and Wrong, his latest, and it does not disappoint.

Wade Jackson, a young aspiring writer from a Newfoundland outport, meets Rachel van Hout while at university in St. John’s and falls in love with her. Little does he know how much the van Hout family will change his life. As he gets to meet Rachel’s three sisters and their parents Hans and Myra, he comes to see how dysfunctional they are. The daughters are all damaged souls: Gloria is hypersexual and has had a spate of broken marriages; Gloria is addicted to drugs provided by her husband Fritz; Bethany is an anorexic who has made several suicide attempts; and Rachel is hyperlexic, obsessively reading Anne Frank’s Het Achterhuis, and hypergraphic, obsessively writing a diary in a secret language. Wade accompanies Rachel to South Africa and it’s then that more and more family secrets are revealed, most with Hans at the centre.

The point of view alternates between Wade, Rachel, Rachel’s encoded diary entitled “The Arelliad” written in both prose and poetry, and Hans’ “The Ballad of Clan Van Hout”, a poetic family history which he composes and recites to his daughters. Reading “The Arelliad” is sometimes frustrating because much is left unexplained. Who, for example, is “Shadow She, the also-Anne”? The ballad is also confusing because Hans’ version of events changes and it is difficult to know what to believe. It does, however, provide great insight into Han’s mind and personality.

Characterization is a strong element in the novel. All major characters emerge as distinct. The four sisters, for instance, cannot be confused. They often seem to behave in illogical ways, but all is eventually explained. Rachel’s secret is the last to be uncovered, though I did guess the nature of it. Certainly the last great revelation explains Rachel’s obsessions. In case the reader is uncertain as to why she occasionally writes in poetic form, Johnston outlines his reasoning in the Author’s Note at the end of the book.

Hans will remain for me one of literature’s great villains; more than once I thought of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. He is full of self-pity: “I’m not the star that I should be because so many worker bees have spent their lives opposing me . . . the great held back by also-rans.” He doesn’t love his wife, pretending to “adore the woman who so loudly snores, the aging face, the greying head I cannot bear to touch in bed.” He wishes he “could have another wife” but “I would not sully with divorce what matters most – my name of course.” He’s a racist who said “’that the blacks were uncivilized and impossible to educate, so they should never be allowed to vote or to mix with whites.’” He is a master manipulator who accepts no blame for even his most despicable of behaviour. Some of his comments in his ballad left me speechless. Yet the reader, like Rachel, will ask, “Was it the sum of his experience that made [him] what he was, or some mechanism in his brain, some defect in his DNA?”

As the title indicates, the book examines right and wrong. Hans argues that right and wrong change over time, “The rules are endlessly revised.” Decisions made by several people at different times in the novel inspire one to consider if a wrong can be a right in certain circumstances. In order to survive, for instance, is it right to commit a wrong? As the author admits, he doesn’t offer answers to the questions it poses, but book clubs will find much to debate.

At over 550 pages, the book is lengthy. At first the revelations come slowly but then I wondered what other secrets would be revealed. I was even starting to think that the book was becoming almost unbelievable. Then the Author’s Note clarifies that the novel is based on people and events in his life. I was astonished by what Johnston discloses and by his bravery in doing so.

I highly recommend this book. Though the pace is sometimes slow and sections are confusing, all is eventually made clear. And though it touches on many serious topics, it is, as the author states, not a totally dark book. I’m not certain that I, like one of the book’s characters, can claim to be a “great reader” who reads with “hard-won discrimination,” but I do know this is a book that will reward a second reading: I’m certain it will make the author’s skill even more obvious.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).

entertaining!

Impressive, unconventional, funny, mesmerizing historical novel about Newfoundland and two of its maverick inhabitants, Joe Smallwood (scavenging journalist, loser, one-time socialist and later PM of Newfoundland) and Sheilagh Fielding (journalist, muckraker, brave, cynical, extremely funny woman of endless qualities). It is the interaction between these two doomed lovers that carries the story, whereby the character and wit of Fielding is infinitely more impressive than the lame, hair-brained, fickle, fame-seeking character of Smallwood.

(Mind! spoilers ahead!) It all revolves, it seems, around a limited number of encounters at school, where Joey (smallwood) hangs out with a group of elite boys (invited by Prowse, the leader of the gang, grandson of a Newfoundland judge at the high court, who wrote a very influential History of Newfoundland) and Fielding hops over from the neighbouring girls High, playing girlfriend of Prowse. The start and end of the affair comes rapidly when an accusing letter is received by the head of school, Reeves, which incriminates Joey. Reeves, who wishes to expel Joey anyway, considering him a low life with corresponding character (pegged at 45 out of a 1000), tries to get Joey to take responsibility. Joey refuses to do so. Then Fielding steps forward and admits she has written the letter to get back at Joey. Result – Fielding is expelled from her school, and not much later Joey drops out from his school. Now who really wrote the letter, and why? In the remainder of the book we follow Joey’s failed career as journalist, scraping a living in new York for five years, and after his return to Newfoundland organising railway workers for the union by walking all the tracks and side branches (and being saved by Fielding in a sudden snow blizzard); him going by boat along all destitute settlements and once the pack ice closes in, continuing on foot along the South end of the island state, him ending up running a radio show as the Barrelman, sharing local folklore and gaining him national fame, which then comes in handy once he starts campaigning for Confederation with Canada after ww2 and winning several elections after the surprise outcome of the national referendum. Fielding is not so fortunate – she is bent on a career as sharp-tongued, witty, cynical commentator for a variety of newspapers.

And then at the end of it all, the Fielding’s terrible secret is borne out. And that’s a real tear jerker. Not only did she bear two kids, to lose one in the war, without him knowing who she was, also the dad of her kids is a surprising one. In the process Johnston has rewritten Newfoundland’s history and made the reader part of that history of failure, ice, foiled plans and hard lives (with the imagery of dead frozen sealers on the ice as one that will not easily be forgotten). And Johnston has given the world one unforgettable character – Fielding. Onwards to the next odyssey around her (The custodian of paradise)!½

Meet the Prendergasts: Audrey who becomes a successful TV personality and producer. She plays Miss Mary, host of the Rumpus Room (if you grew up with Romper Room, you'll be familiar with it). Her son, Henry, plays Bee Good and Bee Bad, wordlessly illustrating how children should/shouldn't behave. Husband/father Peter is an aspiring author who isn't really a fan of TV as a genre. His tongue-in-cheek comments are so funny throughout the book!

Rumpus Room in a great success, but pales in comparison to the success of Audrey and Henry's next program: a show about Philo Farnsworth, the teenager who invented television. Henry plays the title role and develops a cult-like following. All this puts a strain on Peter and Audrey's marriage and on Henry's relationships at school and at home.

This is a highly entertaining story about the early days of television and tabloids and how they affect our lives. Often funny, but with a darker message about the underside of fame.

Loved it! Wayne Johnston can really tell a great story and develop complex characters. This book drew me in from the beginning and I always sighed when life required me to stop reading for a while.

At 14 years old, Ned Vatcher comes home to an empty house and never sees his parents again. They have disappeared and a thorough search reveals no clues or signs of their bodies or car. We follow Ned's life over several decades and watch as his obsession with solving his parents disappearance becomes the defining feature of his life.

There are several strong characters in this book, including Sheilagh Fielding who was a major character in Colony of Unrequited Dreams (which I read) and Custodian of Paradise (which I'm going to read). Fielding is a misfit -- a woman working in a man's field, alcoholic, disabled, spinster, over six feet tall -- and Ned's obsession and wealth make him a misfit as well. They understand each other. Ned's grandparents are also strong characters, dealing with the death of one son and now the disappearance of another. I feel as if I've come to know these fictional people and can understand what drives the choices they've made. Wonderful book -- great story and strong characters both!

i don't know enough about Joey Smallwood to know whether he was such a cipher. But if he was even the addition of a love interest for him - which apparently was controversial - fails to save the Smallwood character in this book from being at all interesting. The character has no interior depth and as the book is first person it eventually just becomes a long drone. There's no feeling to his feelings for Fielding, little depth to his feelings about his father - and those are really the only meaningful interpersonal dynamics at play in the book. Smallwood's interior monologue is nothing more than blank description of things with occassional motivation thrown in His political evolution is dealt with as a mere fact and small event, his motivations for confederation are undeveloped. If you're looking for a historical read this is not it. If you're looking for an interesting character study, this is not it. If you're looking for a romance, this is not it. This is written in the style of the later moderns - a loose baggy thing patterned on Dickens but without his detail, interesting characters or historical grounding - like a later John Irving novel. I was very much looking forward to this book and very disappointed to read it. unrequited, indeed.

I think it would have been better to have read [b:The Colony of Unrequited Dreams|95230|The Colony of Unrequited Dreams|Wayne Johnston|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320470124s/95230.jpg|235533] before reading this novel. Apparently readers were introduced to the main character, Sheilagh Feilding, in that book and were left wanting to learn more about her. As a stand alone character I found her to be a character who was so difficult to like, hard to sympathize with and even harder to truly understand. She is so self-destructive and pushes away everyone who likes and/or tries to help or befriend her. She is brilliant but a physical oddity and life is cruel to her. She faces her challenges with cutting wit, using words to fight back against those who hurt her. Life never gives her a break, but she wouldn't have recognized one or taken anyways.

There is a huge mystery looming over this story and it is compelling, but I felt it just took too long to unravel. In the end it was rather anti-climatic for me. The settings are all wonderfully described, the writing is good, but I just felt that the pace was too slow for me, the pay-off just not there.

Just no. Usually love Johnston's books but this was just distasteful. Could have been an intriguing book - there were so many plot lines that were intriguing, that would have lent themselves to a better novel. Instead this book was just ugly. I kept putting it down and reading other things, reluctant to stay with the story. I read till the end because I paid for it, but I really wish I hadn't -ugh!

Started this book many years ago and didn't finish it. However, finally got there and it was worth the read. Joey Smallwood was a fascinating figure in Canadian History one I'm sure many children in school nowadays know nothing about, and as such his life deserves reviewing. Told from the perspective of Joey himself for the most part, this book takes you through his childhood, his struggles towards adulthood and his monumental failures for the better part of his life, until he manages to bring Newfoundland into Confederation and becomes the first premier of Newfoundland. Funny, touching, self deprecating at times Joey tells an interesting (if not always honest) tale. The counterpoint to Joey is a fictional character named Sheilagh Fielding, a kind of drunken Jiminy Cricket to Joey's often wobbly conscience and political commitment. She haunts his whole life and in many ways gives insight to the man Joe Smallwood becomes by pointing out some of his glaring omissions and questionable justifications.

2.5 stars. Too long & ultimately dreary.

Landish Druken is from Newfoundland and, while attending Princeton, meets George Vanderluyden. They have a falling out, but years later, Vanderluyden has since built a mansion, is married, and has a daughter. He takes in Landish and the boy Landish has taken in, Deacon.

I have to admit to being quite distracted as I read the first 2/3 of the book, so I know I missed some things. For the first 1/3 of the book, I kept reading Landish’s last name as “Drunken”. Oops! It got better (though still wasn’t terribly exciting) for the last 1/3 of the book, when I was able to better focus on it. There were a few twists at the end.

I actually smiled at the dedication and the acknowledgments: I knew his parents and it was dedicated “in loving memory” of them. I was a good friend of his youngest sister so have met some of her siblings, as well (all mentioned in the acknowledgments), though I’ve never met Wayne. Of course, that’s just a personal reaction to those parts of the book that really don’t have to do with the book itself!

I really liked this book, the author really makes everyone come to life, and I got drawn into all the struggles everybody went through. The book spans decades, but the passage of time is really well done, and it was neat to see how everyone changes (or doesn't, in a couple cases) as they age. definitely pick this up when it's released.

I won this from a goodreads giveaway

Fourteen-year-old Ned Vatcher returns home from school one day in 1936 to discover that his parents, Edgar and Megan, have disappeared. Though he has to live with his paternal grandparents, Nan Finn and Reg, it is Father Duggan, a Jesuit priest, and Sheilagh Fielding, a friend of his parents, who become his most stalwart supporters. Cyril, Edgar’s brother, also remains an important character in Ned’s life, though not always in a positive way. Various points of view are provided, but the focus is on Ned and Sheilagh.

Ned’s entire life is driven by his parents’ disappearance. He realizes that “to find out what had become of them would be the main goal of my life.” He also decides that unlike his parents who were destitute and debt-ridden before their disappearance, “I would never want for money if I could help it, no matter what I had to do to get it.” Unfortunately, he ends up losing himself. He becomes “deaf to the tones of my own life” and feels “There simply was nothing at the innermost of me.”

Characterization is a strong element in the novel. Ned is a dynamic character who changes as the years pass. As mentioned, he is shaped by the mysterious disappearance of his mother and father; he spends his life “lamenting the loss of things [he] never had” and loses himself; at one point, he is pointedly told, “’I know who and what I am, Ned Vatcher. Not everyone can say the same.’”

Besides Ned, there are other characters who are fully developed. Nan Finn and Sheilagh Fielding are among the most memorable. Both are sharp-tongued, targeting those who displease them. Nan Finn, for example, had no sympathy for Megan who was very unhappy in Newfoundland and yearned to return to London: “’I can tell by those eyes of hers. It’s a wonder dinner gets cooked what with her being so busy bawling and wishing she was there instead of here. . . . What do people do in London? . . . Sit around and talk to each other with their eyes closed. I better keep busy or I’ll get bored and long for London.’” Sheilagh’s targets are the rich and powerful; she writes a regular newspaper column in which she exposes their foibles and hypocrisies.

Sheilagh appears in the previous two novels of the Newfoundland Trilogy: The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Custodian of Paradise. Both titles are actually mentioned by Sheilagh. It is not necessary to read these books first, but they do provide background to events which are mentioned in this third book. This book brings Sheilagh’s story to a close. It has been a while since I read the first two novels in the series and I think I may go back to them.

Abandonment and disappearance are central motifs in the novel. Edgar and Megan disappear and leave Ned feeling abandoned. Sheilagh disappeared from the lives of her children and ends up feeling abandoned herself. Prowse abandoned Sheilagh and his children and in the end “There was no sign in [his eyes] of anything.” Phonse, Ned’s uncle, vanished at sea on a calm day and was never found; Nan Finn, in particular, tries to understand what happened to him. Ned adopts a child but makes a fateful decision which he comes to regard as his worst mistake, “his sin against his son, which was all too similar to the one that Edgar and Megan committed against him – abandonment to the hands of strangers.”

Even Newfoundland is abandoned when there is a vote to join Canada; Sheilagh muses about “the colony of unrequited dreams that would never be acknowledged as a nation except by those of us who made it one.” Appropriately, the books about Newfoundland that are collected by both Edgar and Ned are lost or damaged. And it is surely significant that The Last Newfoundlander loses his voice because of a botched operation.

As a former English teacher, I loved the many literary allusions. Sheilagh has a room in a brothel; she paraphrases T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “I grow old, I grow old. In the rooms the women come and go, talking of Mike and Al and Joe.” Ned alludes to Joseph Conrad’s novel when he speaks of being “in quest of the heart of no one’s darkness but my own.” Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar makes an appearance (“’I come to query Cyril, not to please him’”) as does The Tempest (“’We are all such stuff as murder is made of’”).

One theme is that “you can taint your whole life by doing one thing wrong” so “even a good man might be the engine of a tragedy.” This theme is mentioned both at the beginning and the end and developed through the lives of several characters.

Though the book is more than a mystery, interest is certainly maintained throughout as to what happened to the Vanishing Vatchers. Just like Ned, the reader will find him/herself trying to learn what happened to Edgar and Megan and why no trace of them was found. There are sufficient clues given so an astute reader may guess the solution.

I have enjoyed Wayne Johnston’s previous novels and this one is no exception. It is great literary fiction with memorable characters, carefully developed themes, and a strong sense of place.

Note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).

sweeping epic of NewFoundland