THE INNOCENTS BY MICHAEL CRUMMEY

A new book by Michael Crummey is always cause for celebration. His previous book, Sweetland, is one of my all time favourite books – so I feared, a little, that The Innocents might not be as wonderful. How could I have doubted?  The Innocents is a great book, and I do not say this lightly.

I read an advance copy of The Innocents in the late spring when I was in Newfoundland. I read it before there had been reviews. So, as I read I came to suspect what was to come in the story without already knowing what was later revealed in reviews. The best way to read a book, in my opinion. Now, many have written about the sensitive content of this novel and you may already know – if you do not, I recommend that you read The Innocents and have the pleasure of discovering this novel without reviewer’s comments.

This is one of the reasons I did not review The Innocents when it was published in August. In fact, this novel spent so many weeks in my memory, as I thought about what I had read, that when I was in Newfoundland again, late this fall, I read The Innocents again.

This time I took my time. I savoured the language and followed much more slowly the events that take place. Early in the novel there is a quote, words said by a midwife, “A body must bear what can’t be helped”. I think of this, and about my own life, as I suspect you will.

The story opens with a family; two parents, two children, and the birth of a third, a daughter, who lives only a short time. Baby Martha is buried close by. It is not long before both mother and father also die. The surviving children, Evered, twelve years old, and Ada two years younger, are left alone now in a remote cove in coastal Newfoundland. There is a community a day’s heavy rowing away, along the coast. But Evered and Ada have no desire to leave their home – and Ada, in any case, will not leave Martha alone in the graveyard. So, they carry on, fishing and growing vegetables, and picking berries. They process the fish as their parents did and exchange it with the merchant for supplies such as tea and flour. They are always desperately close to starvation.

The Innocents is a book of Newfoundland, the lore and the language, the landscape and the endless power of the sea. There are images that will stay in your mind, as will Evered and Ada, brought to life by the amazingly talented Michael Crummey. There is never a moment when this novel does not feel real. This is a novel of privation beyond anything that we can imagine, but also resilience, and ultimately hope, and a trust that things will turn out well for all.

The Innocents was shortlisted for the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize – the fact that it was not awarded any of these is beyond my understanding. I have struggled, without success to write about this novel dispassionately. If you are already a reader of Michael Crummey’s work you know that he among the best – if you are not, it is time you made this discovery. The Innocents is based on a story that Micheal Crummey could not forget, as readers will not forget The Innocents.