BookBrowse Reviews Sweetland by Michael Crummey

BookBrowse:

Sweetland explores the relentless pull of nostalgia and the complicated connection between man and land.

In previous novels such as the award-winning Galore, Michael Crummey has depicted his homeland, the Canadian province of Newfoundland, as a place where myths and legends can come to life. Sweetland shares the same setting and Crummey depicts a place that is itself about to become nothing more than a distant memory. Sweetland is a tiny (fictional) island off the coast of Newfoundland, dependent on the government ferry for the transportation of supplies and people to and from the mainland. There's a problem: the government has decided that it would make more economic sense to give each Sweetland resident a sizeable cash payout than to continue providing public services to the island and its rapidly dwindling population. It's a problem for Moses Sweetland: he's one of the only remaining holdouts resisting the offer.

As you might imagine, given his name, Moses Sweetland's family has lived on the island for generations; he worked as the island's lighthouse keeper for years before automation made the position superfluous. He knows something — sometimes too much — about every one of the island's remaining residents, from housebound Queenie Coffin ("I'll be leaving this house in a box") to would-be barber Duke Fewer to the rabble-rousing Priddle brothers. Most precious to Sweetland is his autistic grand-nephew Jesse, who shares Sweetland's love for the island's geography and its more or less quiet predictability. In the wake of a tragedy, though, Sweetland finds himself making a surprising decision, one that causes him to redefine the history — and possible future — he and the land share.

In less capable hands, the equivalence of the man to the land that Crummey sets up, would be awkward or heavy-handed, but the author's skillful tale-spinning keeps the novel's themes from submerging its story. Sweetland is divided into two parts, each of which offers two parallel narratives, one from the past and the other from the present. The first half introduces the island's colorful inhabitants; the second is far bleaker and more intense, almost a survivor narrative of sorts. The question of survival is, however, implicit throughout the novel, as Sweetland frequently considers whether and how the island's residents are meant to thrive in the modern world. Sweetland uses his laptop to play online poker but remains mystified about the preponderance of information that seems to define the outside world: "An infinite library of information and none of it any practical use to them. A window they could peer through to watch the modern world unfold in its myriad variations, while only the smallest, strangest fragments washed ashore on the island."

Sweetland is perhaps a perfect novel for book group discussions, as it offers numerous opportunities for interpretation and even speculation about everything from the reasons underlying Sweetland's stubbornness to the nature of his ultimate fate. It's also a powerful character study of an older, scarred but undefeated man, as well as a potent portrait of the land and people he adores. Crummey offers some vivid — and times gruesomely so — scenes of farm and factory life as well. Brutality, humor, and beauty are on display throughout Sweetland, all couched in energetic prose that is both authentic and thoughtful, much like its protagonist: "A life was no goddamn thing in the end," Sweetland considers at one point, in a sentiment that his later actions would seem to belie. "Bits and pieces of make-believe cobbled together to look halfways human, like some stick-and-rag doll meant to scare crows out of the garden. No goddamn thing at all."

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in January 2015, and has been updated for the October 2015 edition. Click here to go to this issue.