Voyage out discusses Galore by Michael Crummey
~Post by Brian C.
The Voyage Out Book Club meets at 5pm on the last Sunday of every month at BookPeople. We read regional fiction. The April meeting was the beginning of our Canadian region. Our first book in our Canadian quartet was Galore by Michael Crummey. Below is a list of some of the things we talked about:
• Galore includes a family tree in the beginning of the book. Crummey’s writing is dense, and the book has a lot of characters, so the visual is helpful ( not available on e-books). The tree does contain some spoilers. We often talk about how members chose to read a book, what tools they used, what vagaries they took, and the presence of these trees forced us to make a choice early about how we would read this book.
• We discussed the language. Crummey offers no favors when it comes to understanding. This book is, even on my second pass, a hard one for me to follow. One of my fellow members pointed out that the narrator, although omniscient, doesn’t offer much in way of the character’s inner dialogue. The writing is hard to crack. It should be noted that the writing is also, at times, quite beautiful—especially when the author is writing about folk lore. The book takes place in Newfoundland, and the writing seems to mirror the place. Both are cold and unforgiving, difficult places to find meaning, but also unique and wonderful. Galore’s prose is your favorite chair. It may not be the prettiest, or the cleanest, but it fits, and it feels like soft nostalgia.
• We talked about the characters, a lot. Galore is the 200 year struggle of two families from Newfoundland. Spanning many generations, the book’s list of characters is impressive. What is odd about these characters is that they form a monotonous polyphony. No character, not even Judah, sticks out. They share equally in the drama and the outcome of the novel. This makes for a rich discussion, where you have almost too much to discuss. We laughed at Father Phelan, fell in love with Bride, hated King-Me, and stood in awe of Devine’s Widow. In a novel from a mysterious place, which is peppered with magic, and is anchored by war and politics and a rapidly accelerating world, it is refreshing to note that many of the big moments happen when two people who have known each other for their entire lives, sit and talk.
• We talked about folk lore. Religion and folk lore interact in this small community in remarkable ways. And in the end, you come away with a feeling that the book has not just recounted a few of Newfoundland’s most wonderful folk tales, not just shown us how these tales help people in their day to day, but that the book has just shown how these folk tales come into the world. Why do many of our folk rituals include water? Why do we do these things, which we’ve done for generation after generation, without any real understanding of how these rituals came to be—and why are they so helpful? How much truth is living in these rituals? We never follow the old advice to stay away from politics and religion, and I don’t think you could have a fruitful conversation about this book without those subjects.
We talked about a lot more, but I won’t go into it all here. Safe to say, I learned a lot about the book, and I had a blast. This is an open group, and all are welcome to stop by. I hope you do. Below is a list of our scheduled meetings. Thank you.
May 27th : Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
June 24th : Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
July 29th : The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
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