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Product Description
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In The Wreckage, his second novel, River Thieves author Michael Crummey explores how a single ill-fated encounter can wreck lives and all but destroy love. Mercedes Parsons is only 16 when she meets hard-drinking Wish Furey in the early 1940s at a movie on Little Fogo Island. The intensity of their attraction rises like heat off the page, giving the early chapters of The Wreckage the seductive allure of Barbara Gowdy's The Romantic. The problem here is that Wish is a Catholic, and for the Protestants of Newfoundland's north shore, Romanism is akin to devil worship. Fearing that he has accidentally killed Mercedes's older brother, Wish ends up fleeing Little Fogo and enlisting in the British Army, only to be captured by the Japanese. Mercedes follows him as far as St. John's where she patiently waits out the war, spurning the advances of a handsome trumpet player in the belief that Wish will come back for her.
At this point The Wreckage begins to flag slightly. Alternating between Mercedes's daily routines in wartime St. John's and Wish's brutal experiences in a POW camp near Nagasaki, the narrative seems to float along, without any clear sense of direction. Crummey's evocation of POW life in the lead-up to the dropping of the atomic bomb is graphic and compelling, but his decision to include the consciousness of Wish's nemesis, the camp's sadistic Canadian-born "interpreter," dilutes the power of their final confrontation. The novel recovers some of its earlier momentum in a touching, if occasionally hokey, contemporary conclusion. Mercedes, now an old woman, returns to St. John's to salvage what's left of her lost love, and in a way, gets her Wish. --Lisa Alward --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
National Bestseller
Nominee, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2005
“If there’s a better Canadian novel published this year, I’ll be amazed."
— Robert Wiersema, Vancouver Sun
“Heroically human. . . . Crummey offers a journey of stimulating moral inquiry, one of his fiction’s most admirable qualities.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Extraordinary. . . . [Crummey] explores human nature, charting the moral choices of his characters without passing judgment. . . . [His] gift is to write with compassion, imbuing relationships with complexity and depth. He doesn’t make anything simple – or simplistic. The Wreckage shows with profound insight that nothing’s fair in love and war.”
—National Post
“A tale of love and loss, fear and prejudice and hate. . . . Crummey has delved into the complexity of the 20th century, revealing some of the most destructive events, both in Newfoundland and the world. . . . As the images [he] so vividly conjures up return to the mind at the end of the novel, the subtleties of the story deepen even
further.”
—Quill & Quire
“If there’s a better Canadian novel published this year, I’ll be surprised.”
— Robert Wiersema, The Vancouver Sun
Praise for River Thieves:
“A remarkable achievement. . . . This is powerful writing.”
—Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain
“This multi-faceted jewel of a book is probably the finest Canadian novel of the year.”
—National Post
“Michael Crummey is a tremendously gifted writer.”
—Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief
National Bestseller
Nominee, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2005
“If there’s a better Canadian novel published this year, I’ll be amazed."
— Robert Wiersema, Vancouver Sun
“Heroically human. . . . Crummey offers a journey of stimulating moral inquiry, one of his fiction’s most admirable qualities.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Extraordinary. . . . [Crummey] explores human nature, charting the moral choices of his characters without passing judgment. . . . [His] gift is to write with compassion, imbuing relationships with complexity and depth. He doesn’t make anything simple – or simplistic. The Wreckage shows with profound insight that nothing’s fair in love and war.”
—National Post
“A tale of love and loss, fear and prejudice and hate. . . . Crummey has delved into the complexity of the 20th century, revealing some of the most destructive events, both in Newfoundland and the world. . . . As the images [he] so vividly conjures up return to the mind at the end of the novel, the subtleties of the story deepen even
further.”
—Quill & Quire
“If there’s a better Canadian novel published this year, I’ll be surprised.”
— Robert Wiersema, The Vancouver Sun
Praise for River Thieves:
“A remarkable achievement. . . . This is powerful writing.”
—Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain
“This multi-faceted jewel of a book is probably the finest Canadian novel of the year.”
—National Post
“Michael Crummey is a tremendously gifted writer.”
—Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Wreckage - A captivating book from the first page to the last!,
By
This review is from: The Wreckage (Paperback)
I loved The Wreckage - I would rate it in the top 5 Canadian books I've read to date. This novel artfully weaves East Coast history with intractable familial connection and sets them against the backdrop of the devastation of World War II and the blinding reality of the present day. The characters are achingly familiar, yet complex in a way that draws feelings of empathy, pity, horror, passion, and fascination from the reader. All of the elements of a good novel can be found within the pages of The Wreckage - love, shame, regret, historical fact, and culture, to name but a few. If you want to 'escape' in a way that engages both your heart and your mind, buy this book!!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my favourite books of 2005 -,
By S. Durno (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wreckage (Hardcover)
The Wreckage is one of my favourite books of 2005. I bought it after hearing the author read at The Ottawa Writer's Festival. Crummey is an excellent reader as well as writer. The characters are very real people who leap off the page with their passions and their flaws. I liked and sympathized with them and got mad at them. Michael Crummey writes with a poet's eye, events and scenes are finely observed and none is over-written. I didn't race through the book because I found myself pausing to consider how beautifully some scene or feeling was expressed, just exactly right, putting my thoughts or feelings into words that I could never find or opening my eyes to new observations. I also enjoyed the historical aspects, WWII, Nagasaki, Newfoundland before joining Canada and after, the Lebanese in St. John's, Newfoundlanders, the Catholic-Protestant conflict, etc. I don't understand why The Wreckage has not been at least short-listed for many book awards. It deserves a wide audience.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Rewarding & Disappointing,
This review is from: The Wreckage (Paperback)
The Wreckage is a long love story between Wish and Mercedes that also focuses on hate, and war, and the prejudice that causes both. I would recommend it with reservations, because it is both rewarding and disappointing. Rewarding because his poetic and imaginative images stick with you long after you've set the book down, and they are so rich that it's only readable in gulps. Disappointing because Crummey tends to ramble and sway back and forth from character to character without much development. You are left wondering if certain characters were necessary, or if Crummey mistakenly left out a crucial key to their involvement in the story. I think Crummey's strength lies in description rather than plot, and he is much better suited for the short story than the novel. But I haven't read River Thieves yet so may have to change my opinion on that account. Still, The Wreckage has enough going for it to make it worthwhile: the author's great understanding of Newfoundland and what sets it apart; the aforementioned gift he holds with images; and certain lines here and there that sum up general human truths practically and succinctly.
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