Prizes and Awards: Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First
Novel Award Shortlist 2002
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Product Description
From Amazon
2002 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award Shortlist: Cumberland, the small town between Ottawa and Montreal that gives its name to Michael V. Smith's debut novel, is a mournful place. The residents whose stories Smith tells make lonely circles around each other, brooding silently over lost sons, mothers, wives, lives. Ernest, the most central of them, is a labourer in his 50s, working in a dwindling industry and trying to dodge his past and his desires by changing the bar he drinks in every few years. His orbit intersects with those of Bea, a bartender who takes him into her life; Amanda, a 17-year-old boarding with Bea and giving adulthood a try; Nick, still stumbling from his wife's death a year before and the unwitting focus of desire in the story; and Nick's quiet son Aaron.
Smith's style, like that of his characters, is modest to a fault, inviting comparisons to David Adams Richards's small-town dramas, but Smith doesn't quite have Richards's ear, or his intensity. What he has is Joan Barfoot's patient, realist integrity, pursuing character and circumstance to their ends, with an empathetic range surprising in a young first novelist. He is best with moments of physical intimacy: the bewildered aggressions of young boys experimenting with their bodies, the tentative, grateful embraces of middle-aged couples remembering what theirs can do. But he has enough respect for the constraints of these lives not to try to shoehorn them into a neat tale of sexual awakening. Instead, the thoughts of one man, as he yearns to be comforted in the arms of another, might speak for everyone in the book: "They were small in the face of their fears and the world's potential for harm." --Tom Nissley
Review
Smith is another of the many fine graduates of the UBC Writing Program, and in Cumberland gives a clear look at a group of well-defined characters in a dying industrial town in Ontario. Ernest is 50ish and divorced. He has just lost his long-time job at a mill because it closed down. Ernest is a loner who drinks too much and has a sexual identity problem. He begins a relationship with Bea, a waitress at a local bar, a 40ish woman who has never had a permanent relationship.
Nick is 35, a cable installer grieving the death of his wife so much he doesn't have time for his 9-year-old son Aaron. Amanda is 17, fleeing a bad home life and rents Bea's extra bedroom. Here we have five very lonely people. How they interact with each other is handled in a remarkably mature manner. Amanda is attracted to Nick. Aaron takes up with a thuggish boy his own age. Bea has some difficult decisions to make. These are mainly decent people who have lived hard lives, something that isn't going to change. They are sympathetic and the set up is strong. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. For about 250 pages this was the best first novel of the year. Unhappily, it's as if a Hollywood screenwriter was hired finish up the book for Smith. There are artificial confrontations, and a false climax involving Aaron running away. Characters do everything but say "What is that supposed to mean?" When Amanda declares her interest in Nick, he sends her on her way with a lecture that could have been delivered by a Doctor of Sociology. The happy endings are neither plausible nor convincing. Still, the first part of this book is brilliantly done, and that makes the whole worth looking at.
W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada) -- Books in Canada
Nick is 35, a cable installer grieving the death of his wife so much he doesn't have time for his 9-year-old son Aaron. Amanda is 17, fleeing a bad home life and rents Bea's extra bedroom. Here we have five very lonely people. How they interact with each other is handled in a remarkably mature manner. Amanda is attracted to Nick. Aaron takes up with a thuggish boy his own age. Bea has some difficult decisions to make. These are mainly decent people who have lived hard lives, something that isn't going to change. They are sympathetic and the set up is strong. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. For about 250 pages this was the best first novel of the year. Unhappily, it's as if a Hollywood screenwriter was hired finish up the book for Smith. There are artificial confrontations, and a false climax involving Aaron running away. Characters do everything but say "What is that supposed to mean?" When Amanda declares her interest in Nick, he sends her on her way with a lecture that could have been delivered by a Doctor of Sociology. The happy endings are neither plausible nor convincing. Still, the first part of this book is brilliantly done, and that makes the whole worth looking at.
W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada) -- Books in Canada
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cumberland,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cumberland (Paperback)
Cumberland is written in an almost effortless prose that seems to melt away and let the mind engage the story independant of syntax, and it's this effortless and affecting prose that becomes the main character in Cumberland, and that in itself is no small feat because the characters are so real you almost begin to think of them with your own names, rather than the names they're given by Smith. The portrait of small town southern Ontario is part Alice Munroe and part David Lynch. There is a dark undertow beneath the still waters of Cumberland, and it's this undertow that gives the novel its main pull. Earnest, a fifty year old, laid-off factory worker, a single man still marked by the death of a six year old son 17 years past, and Aaron, the six and a half year old son of Nick, a mid-thirties widower, form the heart of the story. Smith's two female characters---Bea, a forty-something waitress looking for a commitment from Earnest, and Amanda, a 17 year old on the outs with her family---counterbalance nicely the deeply affected emotional lives of the male characters. This novel is about life in the face of loss, about going on, and about the forceful undertows in the human psyche. This is a good novel by any standard, but, as a first novel, it marks an auspicious debut for the abundantly talented Smith. I highly recomend it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read Now, Say Later: I Read Him When He Used To Be Unknown,
By Steve (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cumberland (Paperback)
Canada's Michael V. Smith, Ireland's Colm Toibin, Russia's Chekhov. It's hard to imagine the three of them conversing over toast at breakfast. But the books of these writers would cozy up quite comfortable on your shelf.Ideally, "Cumberland" would have a cover of flannel. It wraps its characters in care as it gently opens their hearts to our view. And like any open heart surgery, there is the hope of a better life after, and the constant forboding of terrible consequences. A darn good read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
great reader, great novel,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cumberland (Paperback)
I bought the novel after hearing Michael Smith read at a Toronto event. What an incredible reader - he was honest, spontaneous, and moving. It was interesting how all segments of the audience (all kinds of people) were engaged. Smith breaks down a lot of social divisions - warmly and effortlessly. Cumberland is much the same. An honest portrayal of lives you often don't hear about, in a smallish town. Eye-opening, and very *caring*. You can't help but enjoy reading this, and up feeling very close to some people you might not normally meet in your daily life.
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