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352 reviews for:

The Innocents

Michael Crummey

3.58 AVERAGE


I will provide anyone who reads these reviews a more complete, if probably brief, summary of my thoughts on this book. But it will all be able to be summed up in: “This is quite possibly the greatest work of writing and storytelling and crafting of the English language I have ever read.”
colinfdavis's profile picture

colinfdavis's review

4.25
emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

A tale of survival and how a relationship evolves over time. There were chapters that were so addictive and page turning, while others a bit slower. I loved following the sibling’s story, but loved the side characters that popped in throughout even more.

An astonishingly good book. I can see why it's been nominated for every prize, although I can't see why it hasn't won them all.

Crummey is a poet as well as a prose writer, and his meticulous attention to language is obvious in every beautiful sentence. The cadence and idiom of his native Newfoundland is a musical and sensory pleasure.

What I've always loved about Crummey's writing, apart from the language, is the depth of insight he displays into the human heart and soul. Never has it been more in evidence than here.

Parts of the book are harsh and difficult to read, but how could it be otherwise seen through the eyes of isolated, impoverished orphans, barely surviving on the isolated coast of Newfoundland in the early 1800s. Parts of it may be considered controversial, and they certainly are unsettling, but Crummey handles these 'bits' with such understanding and compassion that I hope any reader of empathy will withhold judgment.

For more insight into this wonderful book, I recommend this article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-michael-crummey-returns-with-the-innocents-exploring-complex-physical/


challenging dark medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
dark emotional sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

Great writing. Weird plot.
challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

What a brilliant prose stylist Michael Crummey is - and what a pity that he had to tarnish what could have been a straight-up classic with an unnecessary incest-based plot line. Any great novel almost has to make the reader uncomfortable in one way or another, but here it felt like a distraction. That's a shame when the first half of the novel had me thinking that this was the book to read about Newfoundland. Crummey's writing about the ugliness and depravation resulting total isolation is absolutely first rate, and his scene setting is masterful. The first chapter is one of the very best openers I've read by any author, from anywhere, any time period, ever. But man did it ever go downhill in the second half. Those were buttons that just didn't need to be pushed. Alas, a book I shall not be re-reading, when it could have been an all-time great.

3/5


for the love of sweet baby jesus on the cross do i love michael crummey's writing. like... SERIOUSLY! he is such a unique and inimitable talent. his skill with language continually impresses me, and his ability to truly present the settings of his stories as vivid characters leaves me in awe. that's a lot of praise, isn't it? for what it's worth, i did go into the read fairly neutral. of course i was excited for a NEW michael crummey novel, but i did manage to keep my expectations in check. so even though i do consider him one of my favourite writers, i do not automatically love everything he does and give his work careful consideration. (i felt the need to qualify my praise for some reason.)

from the CBC:
"Years ago, while doing some research in the St. John's archives, [Crummey] came upon a reference to an 18th century clergyman who discovered two young siblings living on their own in an isolated cove. When the clergyman approached them to ask how they came to be there on their own, the boy chased him off at gunpoint. That anecdote lodged itself in Michael Crummey's head, and eventually led him to write his fifth work of fiction, a novel called The Innocents."

Says Crummey, "There was one salient detail, which was that the sister was pregnant. And the clergyman got up on his high horse about that and assumed — probably quite rightly — that the brother was the father. That's why he was driven off by the brother.

I immediately thought that there was a story there to tell and I immediately dismissed it because I didn't want to touch that with a ten-foot pole. But it has stayed with me. And I think the thing that made it stay with me was my sense of what an appalling circumstance those children would have found themselves in — to be orphaned in a place without any outside influences at all, and then having to try and discover who they were and how the world worked.

And I do think childhood for all of us, to one extent or another, is about that appalling confusion."


the appalling confusion of childhood -- RIGHT?

writing for the globe and mail, jessica leeder offers a lovely, thoughtful review. her summary of the novel i share here:
The Innocents is the coming-of-age story of Evered and Ada Best, young siblings who find themselves orphaned and alone in a remote, isolated cove in northern Newfoundland after their parents and infant sister succumb to fatal illnesses. In true Crummey fashion, the tale is set in a rural, bygone place that is simultaneously so brutal and bewitching that the island itself becomes a complex, unruly character.

Rich with visceral descriptions and outport dialogue that transports readers in both place and time, the story traces the siblings’ bone-tiring bid to stave off death as they grow up in the only place they know as home. Left with little more than an unreliable skiff and a set of memorized idioms to guide them (“A body must bear what can’t be helped”), the siblings battle starvation, the relentless cruelty of rain, cold and winter, and, eventually, a foreign form of isolation: the unexplained onset of puberty. Crummey deftly portrays the physical elements of adolescence as yet another mystifying imposition of nature, but one that both alienates the Best siblings and irrevocably binds them.
while there is no getting around the fact this is a coming-of-age story, by melding it with a tale of desperate, hardscrabble, survival crummey has created a story that feels singularly new. crummey also takes on some very difficult ideas headfirst, despite his initial hesitation to not "touch it with a ten-foot pole.".
Spoilercannibalism; incest.
and when he goes to these taboo places with his story, they aren't sensationalized. they are heartbreaking, raw, and inescapable parts of the children's existence.

there were several gut-punch moments in the innocents and one, in particular, that left me in tears. and not those pretty tears that gently trickle down. nope. a full-on ugly cry took place.
Spoiler the bear cub, you guys. THE GODDAMN BEAR CUB!
the ending of the story surprised me. i thought crummey was going to go a different way with it, and had been bracing myself for another big, ugly cry. instead, in this exquisite novel he leaves us with hope for ada and evered. hope.

I am a big fan of Michael Crummey and this book does not disappoint. Beauty, heartbreak, hope & desolation.