We’re so excited about our Top Shelf pick for May, Galore, the new novel by Michael Crummey, that we couldn’t wait for our print newsletter to come out to share this review by Master Bookseller Kester Smith. Galore is already the winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book; Caribbean & Canada and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award; Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction; the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Book Award; and the Winterset Award. So far the staff opinion has been universal: READ IT!
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I will tell you that it ends beautifully. I will not tell you how it ends, only that it is an ending as magical as the beginning and as rich and full as each page in between.
It begins with a whale. A whale washed up onto the shores of rural Newfoundland; a Newfoundland almost too extravagant to be real. And yet, the place is real and the people seem even more so; the families and their stories spanning two centuries and multiple generations. So many characters and plotlines and yet handled so deftly and delicately that the reader is never lost in the details the way we are in author Michael Crummey’s imagination.
And speaking of imagination; back to the whale. It is the beginning of the 19th century in Paradise Deep, and a whale is found beached upon the shore. When the townspeople convene to claim their piece, a man spills out from the flesh of the fish. The man is alive, but does not speak; either unable or unwilling to tell the story of who he is and from where he comes. Dubbed Judah by the locals, he is taken in by the town and his story becomes tied to theirs and theirs is a story of and for the ages; equal parts myth, miracle, and mystery.
Which is not to say that this is some ethereal epic filled with purple prose. Galore’s characters are incredibly earthy and powerfully funny and wonderfully human; at times crass, often kind, and always colorful. Their stories have the feel of tall tales and yet those that are too good not to be true.
Michael Crummey’s writing style is closest to that of Garcia Marquez and his storytelling is even more glorious and grand. His prose reads like poetry, with a sensitivity to how words form images and how cadence shapes narrative. Less than halfway into the year and I can confidently claim this to be my top pick for 2011. An elegant and engrossing read. And it ends as beautifully as it begins. And that is no small thing.
~Kester Smith, Master Bookseller
Bonus! Michael Crummey talks about writing Galore.
BookPeople 
I feel so inspired to read this novel. Not just because I grew up in Newfoundland, but Galore sounds like a book that can’t be let down. So many plots and characters gives the impression of a “can’t stop till it’s done”. Kester, thanks for the review.