Sylvanus Now: A Novel
LikeKit's Law(2001) andDownhill Chance(2003), Morrissey's third novel set in mid-twentieth-century Newfoundland examines the interpersonal dynamics that link the inhabitants of an insular fishing village. This time the pressures on the fishermen and their wives come from both within (insularity suffocates even as it nurtures) and without, as modern fishing methods threaten the livelihood of the locals. Sylvanus Now is determined to fish the way his ancestors did, but his wife, Adelaide, yearns for escape: from a stultifying future of tending babies and working "on the flakes," where women salt-dry the freshly caught fish. Morrissey meticulously documents the bitterness that grows in both husband and wife as their very different dreams are slowly crushed. And yet, in the midst of seething emotions and steadily building disappointment, a sustaining love begins to grow between the beleaguered pair. Morrissey generates a remarkable intensity of emotion here, and if the novel often seems oppressively sad, it is buoyed by the crispness of detail and the author's ability to vivify the slow process through which an inner life is transformed.Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved