Sweetland by Michael Crummey
Sweetland is the name of a small
island off the coast of Newfoundland inhabited by a band of quirky
characters. The government is offering
resettlement money to the residents on one condition: all the residents have to
agree to leave. There are, naturally, a
few holdouts including Moses Sweetland, a descendant of the founders of the
community. What will it take to convince
him to leave? Can he really be
convinced?
I enjoyed the characters and their
interactions, but then the second part of the book starts and it completely
changes in tone. What was fun and quirky
is now bleak and depressing. You know it
will happen, Moses returns to the island, but then he loses his boat and is
trapped there during the winter and the elements and the isolation takes its
toll.
I enjoyed the writing and the story
was well crafted, but I wasn’t prepared in such a change in the mood of the
novel from the first to second half. I
did enjoy it as a study of an ordinary man and the twists and turns his life
takes throughout his lifetime.
