Book Review

By Derryll White

Lundrigan, Nicole (2011).  Glass Boys.

“Christ, what magic he don’t do with a bucket of potato peel.”

I am drawn to novels by Newfoundland writers. Born on the Bay of Fundy and back and forth in my teens and twenties across the large scope of Canada more times than I care to count, I have never made it onto ‘the Rock.’ It is mythic, more moose than people, small outport towns, James Street.  I have to get there before I pass on.

Nicole Lundrigan grew up in Newfoundland and it is immediately apparent in the writing.  The book begins in the archetypal Newfoundland of outports; two brothers (the Trench boys – “complimentary shadows’) drunk on illegal home brew, rolling around in neighbours’ gardens eating stolen potatoes, carrots, cabbage raw. There is talk of the fishery, of moose, a feeling of subsistence living and a strong sense of community.

That quickly you know you are into an East Coast Canadian novel.  Growing up I remember the Italian men making ‘grappa,’ but from grape skins.  It was always the East coasters working magic in the neighbourhood with either rum or potato peelings.  Drinking from the bottle of crystal clear liquid Ray Glass hissed, “Christ … That’d rip the hair off the rabbit.” Definitely very small town, definitely subsistence; definitely Newfoundland.

I believe readers will be captured, as I was, by the local nature of this story, by the gentle dialect and the many local tales of mermaids, local Romeo and Juliets, love lost, the ice going out and the dangers of the harbour ice. Then there are the many illusions to Newfoundland’s past beliefs – fairy rings that bring good fortune, dark places that don’t.

How complicated is a family, or a single member for that matter? We might say dysfunctional or other labels, but Lewis and Wilda both have complex family issues to work out within the context of their own small family in a small rural community.  And it is hard work.  Nicole Lundrigen does a superb job of giving us the context, making us feel the burden each of the family members carries, and how that burden weighs on their sons.

How difficult is puberty and the emerging awareness of sex and the different forms it takes?  How does puberty affect family relationships?  This another side of family life explored in Glass Boys, with sympathy, tenderness and understanding in spite of some of the unusual and shocking twists.

And in the end, always the self-evaluation. “So that’s one good thing I done … Wasn’t it?  One good thing?”  To save a mother from destructive knowledge of her dead son, yes, one good thing.  So, a relatively strong and interesting book, and one which I would recommend to readers exploring different aspects of Canadian life and culture.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.”

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