Tuesday, October 18, 2022

The Innocents (Michael Crummey)

 

Honestly, I didn't finish reading this. I found it depressing and cold and even though I kept hoping something would happen that would compel me to read more....I finally just gave up. This book was for my book club and I was hoping when I went to the meeting I could get some inspiration to finish it. No luck. 


I did admire their ability to survive while alone and in such a brutal climate. I think there's an interesting connection in there somewhere between these children and the story of Adam and Eve (even their names....Ada and Evered). Ada's apple was a relic found and taken that she shouldn't take. 


There are too many good books in the world to continue reading ones I don't love.

Goodreads says:

From prizewinning author Michael Crummey comes a spellbinding story of survival in which a brother and sister confront the limits of human endurance and their own capacity for loyalty and forgiveness.

A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them.
Muddling though the severe round of the seasons, through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.
The Innocents is richly imagined and compulsively readable, a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves.
 

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