cover image Barnacle Love

Barnacle Love

Anthony De Sa, Algonquin, $13.95 paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-56512-926-9

In De Sa's debut, a father and son narrate a revelatory, if disjointed, story spanning two generations of Portuguese-Canadian immigrants. Escaping the abuse and overbearing expectations of his mother as well as a pedophile priest, young Manuel Rebelo flees his small Portuguese village on a fishing boat in 1954, finding his promised land in St. John, Newfoundland. Through a number of trials, including a near-drowning at sea, betrayal by his rescuers, and the threat of deportation, Manuel pursues the ghost of his father (who died at sea) and an apparition Manuel calls Big Lips, a fish who appears in times of need and contemplation. Leaping ahead to the 1970s, readers find Manuel married with two children, and living in Toronto's Portuguese neighborhood. From there, Manuel's six-year-old son, Antonio, takes over the narration, precociously chronicling his father's descent into alcoholism, disillusionment, and bitterness. The sudden change in narration underscores the novel's general sense of disorientation; readers will likely find Manuel's journey from victimized altar boy to villainous father jarring, as if, in the confusion, De Sa left out part of the story. (Sept.)