Galore

July 25, 2011
Along the northern coast of Newfoundland, a mute albino man emerges from the belly of a beached humpback whale. As the mystery man, christened Judah by the locals, settles into Paradise Deep, many questions persist, among them: will the stranger bring death or life to the remote village? Spanning two centuries, the novel charts the lives of Judah and his neighbors, documenting their stories of love and lossâsome of which involve ghosts, mermaids, and the similarly unreal. The book's non-linear structure and lack of a main conflict or protagonist may prove challenging to some listeners. Although John Lee's narration, with his unrecognizable accent, gives the story an appropriately mythic and eerie tone, his cadence and lilting inflection often add to listener confusion, making it difficult to determine when characters enter and exit a scene. This intriguing story might be better suited to book form, as listeners may end up getting hopelessly lost in the severe and fantastic world of Paradise Deep. An Other paperback.

Starred review from January 3, 2011
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.