This American debut for Canadian novelist Harvey (Directions for an Opened Body
) is a genre hybrid boasting impressive literary flair. It's a heartwarming romance: fisheries investigator Joseph Blackwood pines for the wife he adores while vacationing with their daughter, and their passion is rekindled in the midst of tragedy. It's a creepy horror story: menacing sea creatures and the eerily unsullied bodies of long-dead seafarers are bobbing to the surface of the waters around the picturesque Newfoundland fishing community of Bareneed, as the villagers are gripped by a mysterious epidemic that causes its victims to forget how to breathe. It's a subtly didactic political allegory: the intrusion of the outside world—and something about too many radio waves in the air—is eroding the companionable insularity of Bareneed's quirky residents, setting off undercurrents of nightmarish, utterly alien violence. And it's a fascinating regional novel: Harvey, a Newfoundlander himself, captures with his haunting voice the earthiness of an insular culture that's as distinct from the rest of Canada as smalltown Southerners are from the rest of America. Comparisons with Stephen King's commercial power and Annie Proulx's literary warmth are apt but glib. Harvey is an author whose storytelling prowess can speak for itself. Agent, Sally Harding
. (Oct.)
