Downhill Chance
Donna Morrissey's second novel, Downhill Chance, is every bit as satisfying asKit's Law, her first, which established this author of the outports as a major new voice in Newfoundland and Canadian fiction. Morrissey, who has been called "a twentieth-century Brontë sister, " weaves an old-fashioned yarn of love, despair, and family secrets against the backdrop of World War II in pre-Confederation Newfoundland. The Osmonds and the Gales are separated by only a few miles of rocky coastline, but it might as well be a thousand miles for all the contact the two families expect to have. Reclusive Luke Osmond lives with his extended clan in Rocky Head, a remote community of six houses "whose people were thought to be more than a little dull in thought, and whose youngsters were reported to be as brazen as a moulting goose. " Clair Gale and her young sister Missy come from the Basin, a bustling metropolis by comparison. It takes a war halfway around the world for Luke's older brother and Clair's father Job to meet, but the downward pull of this tragic wartime encounter destroys one family and threatens to divide a second. From its gothic opening, in which the bedraggled O'Maras emerge out of a stormy night like "the lost children of Abraham, " to its cathartic resolution as Missy gives birth in a crumbling fishing shack, Downhill Chance is taut with emotion and impossible to put down. Even minor characters--like Pearl Osmond, Luke's anxious doom-saying parent, and the ominous "old vet"--resonate long after the tension of this superbly plotted melodrama is released. As for the quietly simmering Clair Gale, she's a heroine to rival any of the strong women in a Jane Urquhart or Ann-Marie MacDonald novel. --Lisa Alward Author(s): Donna Morrissey. Binding Paperback. Publisher(s): Penguin Canada. Label: Penguin Canada.
| Fabricant: | Penguin Canada |
| Numéro de la pièce: | |
| Prix le plus bas (CAD): | 22,00 $ |
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| Auteur : | Donna Morrissey |
| Format : | Paperback |
| Marque : | Penguin Canada (APB) |
