A whale has come to shore, “a gift” to the community raising itself in the cold wilderness on the shore. The young Maria Tryphena Devine (the middle generation of the five we meet in the pages - yes, the book’s structure goes back and forth in time, but it’s smooth) waits impatiently for the whale to die so they can begin to harvest it. Where One Hundred Years of Solitude is a profound and moving book about the joy of life, Galore is really simply a lengthy tale about a Newfoundland community through the eyes of a few families. Where One Hundred Years of Solitude can be generally and specifically applied, Galore might work more for those who know Newfoundland.ĭivided into two parts, Galore takes place throughout much of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, following five generations of characters (don’t worry, that family tree makes sure we’re never lost). Part one starts out cleverly, even if it does come off a bit contrived. And the references serve more to heighten reader expectations, which are not fulfilled.

One of the epigraphs for the book is from Garcia Márquez: “The invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.” And not that One Hundred Years of Solitude owns this feature, but Galore also contains a nice family tree portending its scope. There’s the strange old matriarch who seems to survive everything and intimidate everyone. There are some moments of magical realism for example, a dead husband walks around, morosely watching his wife cuckold him with the priest. There is even a “kind of sleeping sickness.” With all of this, I’m sorry to say, Galore is no One Hundred Years of Solitude. While I didn’t love it, I did enjoy it.Īs I said above, Galore is an homage to (or a rip-off of) One Hundred Years of Solitude. His sentences flow nicely, and his images are poetic without being overdone. Galore is an ambitious novel, filled with fascinating stories, and Crummey is a gifted writer. I’ll be up front: I wouldn’t have included it in my longlist either, though it still surprised me that it wasn’t selected because I think it would appeal to many readers.

The Giller Prize jury did not include it on their list of twelve (in 2008, there were fifteen books on the longlist, making the exclusion more deliberate, unless there was a change in policy I’m unaware of). Crummey was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2001 for River Thieves, and Galore, his incorporation of modes familiar from Garcia Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude into the folklore of Newfoundland, seemed an obvious choice. Before the Giller Prize longlist was announced, KevinfromCanada rounded up some of the most likely picks for me to read.

Galore crummey