23 - Wednesday, March 21, 1990 - North Shore News

Newfoundland books two down-east gems

ne of the idiosyn-
crasies we West
Coast residents ex-

hibit is a chauvinistic in-
clination to think of this as
the coast, ignoring the in-
controvertible fact that our
western seaboard has an
eastern corollary.

Now, we're not talking back
east here (a polite reference to
Ontario that doesn’t induce urges
to do anything involving phlegm).
No, we're talking down east: the
fog-bound, sea-buffeted, brine-
drenched home of herring
chokers, spud-peelers, Acadians
and the Newfs of lore and legend.
Atlantic Canada. That coast.

| only mention it because this
week we're going to have a wee
gander at two fine books direct
from Breakwater Press (charmingly
located at 277 Duckworth St.) of
St. John’s, Newfoundland.

We begin with an impressive
first novel by native son Patrick
O'Flaherty, author of several
scholarly works and two collec-
tions of short stories.

In Priest of God (214 pp.;
paperback), Father John Ryan (a
middle-aged man with a troubled
soul and a mysterious past) has
come by chance to guide the
reluctant flock inhabiting the small
fishing community of Long Cove.

Given the open wonnds probed
daily by the local and national
media, a Catholic priest is regard-
ed with more than a touch of
suspicion in the insular village. But
when Father John, driven by his
own ghosts, begins to suspect that
there may be more to the deaths
of several young boys than mere
accident, he finds himself plunged
into the offal of greed, jealousy,
sexual exploitation and murder
long hidden by Long Cove’s resi-
dents.

Priest of God is, in many ways,
a dark and moody novel. From the
brooding silences, introspection
and thinly-veiled pain of its central
character, Father Ryan, to the
treacherous currents that weave
through the community of Long
Cove, the atmosphere created by
O'Flaherty is foreboding with a
whiff of something other than fish
in the air.

Long Cove itself appears to serve
as a microcosm of Newfoundland

book review

society, torn by divisions of class,
unemployment, changing goals
and value systems, the struggle for
economic and personal survival
and an awareness of the abuses of
the past and the hold they have on
the present.

That O'Flaherty succeeds in
combining these elements in a
novel which can be taken as either
social commentary or entertaining
mystery is proof of the author's
talent. This will not, | suspect and
hope, be the last we hear of
Patrick O’ Flaherty.

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This next book really got me
thinking about how woefully little |
new about Newfoundland. Cer-
tainly little was said on the subject
when I was in school — and |
toddled into kindergarten just six
years after Newfourdland became
the 10th Canadian province on
March 31, 1949.

No Place For Fools (213 pp.;
$24.95 in hardcover) is the first
volume of the late Don jamieson’s
political memoirs, but in many
ways itis also a fascinating survey
of three crucial decades in New-
foundland’s development.

Born in St. John’s in 1921,
Jamieson had a most unusual
childhood. His father was the edi-
tor of a pro-Conservative newspa-
per; his principal opponent was
Joey Smallwood, editor of the
island’s staunch, pro-Liberal
publication.

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