Author(s): Michael Crummey

Novel | Historical | Canada | Fiction Reductions

Crummey's novel has the capacity to change the way the reader sees the world. --Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury Citation 

From bestselling, award-winning author Michael Crummey comes a sweeping, heart-wrenching, deeply immersive novel about a brother and sister alone in a small world.

A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them.

As they fight for their own survival through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.

This novel is richly imagined and compulsively readable, a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves.

*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE

*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD

*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE

*WINNER OF THE 2020 THOMAS RADDALL ATLANTIC FICTION AWARD

*NATIONAL BESTSELLER

*NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY The Globe and Mail * CBC * Toronto Star * Maclean's

Review: Crummey does a powerfully unsettling job of imagining how the onset of sexual feelings and self-consciousness would affect an isolated brother and sister -- James Walton * Times *
Brilliantly written. Different. Unique. * Between The Pages Bookclub *
This is a vivid reimagining of nature and a study of intimacy, involving and compassionate -- Paul Burke * NB Magazine *
Beautifully written [...] It is an unusual book that will stay with me for a long time -- Maggie Macdonald * Netgalley *
Beautiful, brutal and raw [...] Inspired by a story the author found in local archives, this is an incredibly haunting novel - the language powerfully pure, the story uniquely thought-provoking -- Joanne Owen * LoveReading *

Author Biography: MICHAEL CRUMMEY was born in Buchans, a mining town in the interior of Newfoundland, growing up there and in western Labrador. After thirteen years in self-imposed exile in Ontario, he moved home to Newfoundland in 2000. He is the author of five books of poetry, a book of short stories, and four other celebrated novels, including the Giller prize-nominated River Thieves. He lives in St. John's.