Galore
A Novel
by Michael Crummey
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Pub Date Mar 29 2011 | Archive Date Sep 01 2012
Description
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.
Advance Praise
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, Caribbean and Canada and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award
"Crummey (River Thieves) returns readers to historic Newfoundland in his mythic and gorgeous latest, set over the course of a century in the life of a hardscrabble fishing community. After a lean early-19th-century winter, a whale beaches itself and everyone in town gathers to help with the slaughter. But when a woman known only as Devine's Widow--when she's not called an outright witch--cuts into the belly, the body of an albino man slides out. He eventually revives, turns out to be a mute, and is dubbed Judah by the locals. Judah's mystery--is his appearance responsible for the great fishing season that follows?--is only one among many in this wild place, where the people are afflicted by ghosts and curses as much as cold and hunger. Crummey's survey eventually telescopes to the early 20th century, when Judah's pale great-grandson, Abel, sequesters himself amid medical debris in an old hospital where his opera singer cousin, Esther Newman, has returned and resolved to drink herself to death. But before she does so, she shares with him the family history he never knew. Crummey lovingly carves out the privation and inner intricacies that mark his characters' lives with folkloric embellishments and the precision of the finest scrimshaw." --Publishers Weekly, starred review
"The singular world [Crummey] creates is special...A lively, eccentric, mythmaking novel" --Kirkus Reviews
"Crummey's prose is glorious throughout, unflinchingly honest and unsentimentally magical ... the effect is dazzling" --Library Journal (starred review)
"It's an incredibly difficult task to make characters such as these work as human beings as well as elements of folklore, and Crummey does it with as much skill and grace as Gabriel Garcia Márquez does in One Hundred Years of Solitude." --The Globe and Mail
"Pitch-perfect, boisterous...Galore is an endearing romp. For the language alone--and there is so much more--I loved the book." --National Post
"A dense, intricate, and absorbing tale, rich in the nuances of human relationships." --Quill & Quire
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781590514344 |
| PRICE | $17.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 352 |
