Sylvanus Now

March 1, 2006
As in her noted previous novels ("Kit -s Law"and "Downhill Chance", Morrissey -s latest takes place in remote coastal Newfoundland. It is the 1950s, and the fishing trade is being transformed. Sylvanus Now -a proud and stubborn fisherman whose father and older brother drowned at sea -believes that all he requires to make his life complete is to win over the melancholic and aloof Adelaide; he would build her a home away from her large and chaotic family and thus end her life of cleaning fish on the flakes. Yet he does not anticipate the threats from both the huge foreign trawlers scooping up fish from the spawning grounds and from the government, which plans to improve the lives of independent fisherman like Sylvanus by building factory-freezer plants and reB-settling them in larger communities with better roads, schools, and services. The story of their precarious lives is a lesson in the economy and ecology of the fishing industry wrapped up in the colorful vernacular of a novel as fierce as it is uplifting. Recommended for all public libraries." - Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont."

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2006
Like " Kit's Law" (2001) and " Downhill Chance" (2003), Morrissey's third novel set in mid-twentieth-century Newfoundland examines the interpersonal dynamics that link the inhabitants of an insular fishing village. This time the pressures on the fishermen and their wives come from both within (insularity suffocates even as it nurtures) and without, as modern fishing methods threaten the livelihood of the locals. Sylvanus Now is determined to fish the way his ancestors did, but his wife, Adelaide, yearns for escape: from a stultifying future of tending babies and working "on the flakes," where women salt-dry the freshly caught fish. Morrissey meticulously documents the bitterness that grows in both husband and wife as their very different dreams are slowly crushed. And yet, in the midst of seething emotions and steadily building disappointment, a sustaining love begins to grow between the beleaguered pair. Morrissey generates a remarkable intensity of emotion here, and if the novel often seems oppressively sad, it is buoyed by the crispness of detail and the author's ability to vivify the slow process through which an inner life is transformed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)