Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This is a fantastic book. Johnston is definitely one of the best new comic writers coming out of Canada. However, he apparently doesn't know what the word "unrequited" means.
Rating:
Summary: Did you hear the one about a Newfie and his terrific book?
Review: When Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam alerted his readers last month that he would be escaping Boston's summer convention in July to see for himself the beautiful island that is Newfoundland, he blamed his intrigue on Wayne Johnston's book. "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" is a wonderful historical fiction, adding color to the life and times of a man whom others describe as a minor Canadian figure. But Joey Smallwood, as the last founding father of the Canadian Confederation, having brought the coastal nation into the Canadian fold in 1949, is hardly a minor figure. Nor is he a man to be underestimated, and his desire to avoid this is his driving force. From the time Johnston describes his beginning in rags, a school master advising him he would have a lifelong character score of "45 of a possible 200", to his ascension to the leadership of the new province, Smallwood is consistently underestimated. His parents, his teachers, his schoolmates, his employers and political enemies all do reckon Smallwood as someone who won't ever succeed at anything. He is the story of the island nation itself - underfed, malnourished, bleak prospects, constantly cold or wet, abused, disrespected and unexpected to succeed. Only Sheilagh Fielding, his fictional foil in Johnston's story proves to be a colleague, a friend, a guidepost and believer in Smallwood. "Unrequited" describes not only the dreams and hopes of the improbable Smallwood, but also the love that these two central characters pass back and forth. Their relationship, from schoolyard acquaintanceship to golden age acquiescence, threads the storyline together, and parallels the history making in process. Johnston's Fielding is a self-proclaimed Boswell, chronicling her life and those around her in the steady form of letters written to Smallwood. Each chapter in the Smallwood tale is prefaced by serious squibs from both the real historical works of D.W. Prowse, "A History of Newfoundland" as well as the hilarious bandit works of our fictional heroine who pens "Fielding's Condensed History of Newfoundland." She is also a journalist chronicling the rise to political power of Smallwood, and writes a column for the papers called 'Field Day.' Her send-up of the actual floor debate on Confederation between true historical figures Peter Cashin and Joey Smallwood left me in tears of laughter. Johnston's ability to write both in the voice of Smallwood and Fielding is brilliant. Many other passages in the book are memorable including Smallwood's early days in St. John's, a fantastic description of a seal-hunting tragedy, accounts of Smallwood's walk across the province to organize a railworkers' union, and the tale of his journeys through coastal villages and long walk across the winter ice. Johnston delivers the cold, the hunger and the beauty that is Newfoundland. If there is a downside at all to this novel, it is that Johnston spends too many pages revisiting the Smallwood-Fielding relationship, when we want more of these wonderful descriptions of Newfoundland, (or "Old Lost Land" as Smallwood's drunken father rails on the back porch at his demons.) Indeed, those looking for detailed history and deep factual context will not find it here. This is not a history book, per se. Instead, Johnston fills in the black and white history of Joey Smallwood and Newfoundland's march to Confederation with colorful, fictionally rich brushstrokes. In sum, a very memorable read, and I thank Alex Beam for turning me on to it. I suspect he will enjoy his trip.
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