I downloaded Hard Light because I admire Michael Crummey and enjoyed his literary take on Newfoundland history in The Wreckage and his fantastical Galore. So having not investigated further what this book was about, I was surprised when, in the end, it only lasted for one dog walk. A slim volume of what I took to be short stories -- each a perfect gem -- I am now left wondering if they weren't actually poems after all. Either way, as I am now made to understand, each vignette is a story from Crummey's family, and as it says on the audiobook's homepage: "It’s a love-letter to a world and a way of life that has vanished completely in the last fifty years. All of it is true. Even the lies."
And I do recommend the audiobook -- Ron Hynes and Deidre Gillard bring the stories to life; this has the weight and the feeling of an oral history, and no matter that Crummey polished the stories with his pen and ink, the spoken voice does them great justice. To get a sense of it, here's a video of Michael Crummey reading several of the stories himself: here. Some random, favourite moments:
"Making the Fish" : $130 for four months work. It could cut the heart out of a man to think too much about what he was working for.
"Fifties": After father died I got a crew together and went down the Labrador myself. I was just 16 then and the arse gone out of the fishery besides. It only took me two seasons to wind up a couple of hundred dollars in the hole.
"Jigg's Dinner": Carrots are the middle child - - no one's particular favourite but liked well enough by all.
"Bread": Two people should never say the word love before they've eaten a sack of flour together. I really appreciated the woman's perspective in this story and in "What We Needed" -- I'm not a love-story-reading-sap, but my breath hitched in each of these stories as love was unexpectantly discovered.
There is poetry in the reading of a land title in "East By the Sea and West By the Sea" and poetry in the reading of a last will and testament in "Her Mark". There is great Newfie humour in "The Flame" and "The Tennessee Waltz". There are moments of poignancy and wisdom and soon-to-be-forgotten facts and my only complaint would be that the experience ended too soon.
