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Robert Chafe

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Shiny and New
Robert Chafe, illustrated by Grant Boland
Breakwater Books
(Ages6+)

AbigailMaureen Margaret-Rose Davis loves the yearly class Christmas concert. It is her absolute favourite part of Christmas! But this year, everything has changed.For one thing, her beloved Nan won’t be there. Also, without warning or explanation, Mrs. Stevens announces that the concert will be held in the stinky school gym instead of at the church, where it has always been. And for the first time ever, Abigail doesn’t have a solo. 

But before she can express her outrage to her mother, she makes another unhappy discovery: her mother is putting away their Christmas tree and all their decorations because of the new family in town, who are coming for dinner.Abigail Maureen Margaret-Rose Davis is indignant. Until Pops helps her, and all the assembled dinner guests, discover the real meaning of Christmas.

Set in outport Newfoundland, this timeless and warm-hearted tale will speak to readers everywhere. Abigail’s voice is pitch perfect and the author brilliantly captures the perspective of a self-righteous eight year old who is feeling rattled by the break in familiar and cherished routines. Chafe also convincingly depicts the experience of well-meaning individuals anxiously trying to make newcomers feel welcome and of newcomers feeling awkward and out of place. 

Most importantly, with simplicity and great sensitivity, he captures the experience of two human beings finding a connection through a shared experience of loss.

This story is spare and sentimental in the best possible way, tender, and true. It is a quietly powerful reflection on loss and love, on letting go and opening up to new ways of seeing those around us. It is a story for all ages and all times, but especially for now.

(Note: the final version will be illustrated but the illustrations were unavailable for review.)

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Between Breaths
Robert Chafe
Playwrights Canada Press

Reading plays in the quiet of one’s home is more solitary than immersion in a novel, poetry or non-fiction. The most significant difference is imagining how a stage direction would be carried out in such a way as to draw in an audience, as this random example from Robert Chafe’s one-act three-hander play, Between Breaths, illustrates: “JON stands in a tight spot of rain, alone, looking somewhat perplexed but immune to the cold … He stares up into the rain cloud above, then closes his eyes a moment.” As individuals we can picture this, but since water on stage is generally avoided we wonder how this can be achieved, and thus momentarily step away from the reading experience. When the presence of water is amplified from rain to an ocean, and that ocean is filled with whales—their conjured presence and the use of their calls making them nearly another character—the demand on our imagination is greatly increased.

Between Breaths is about Jon Lien (1939-2010), a scientist who originally moved to Newfoundland and Labrador to study seabirds. He was soon known as “the Whale Man,” credited with rescuing hundreds of them after they became entangled in fishing nets. That was not part of his duties when he took up his job at Memorial University of Newfoundland. As Chafe has Jon say: “This fisherman thought I was there to help. Heard I was into whales. Those potheads trapped in the ice the previous year. But I was just there to record them. Their distress.”

One intervention follows another until gradually it becomes a mission lasting many years, embracing ecological concerns as well as the economic damage to fishers from ruined and expensive nets, until Jon’s health declines. The play opens with him “trapped” in his wheelchair and ends with his release. In between the first and last scenes Chafe describes, through a mixture of exposition-laden and semi-dramatic flashbacks, how the healthier Jon—with support from an employee named Wayne, a former whaler who became his friend and right-hand man, and sometimes in the face of opposition from an unnamed MUN dean—grew to embrace his unexpected role.

Most of the life-saving events occur on and under the water. That means the stage directions contain explicit details of events that readers who are also theatregoers would not expect to see mounted. “The whale bumps the boat suddenly” is one instance that speaks to the canvas Chafe has created, and indicates that only a larger and more costly production than is usual could capture his full vision. A CBC story from May 2016, “Whale researcher Jon Lien’s life set to be dramatized this summer,” contained this remark about Between Breaths: “‘We’re doing a sort of stripped down version of this play this summer that can easily tour to rural communities, and we’re really happy about that,’” said [producer] Pat Foran, adding the skeleton and more elaborate sets may appear in subsequent productions.”

For me this mingling of Chafe’s ambition and an awareness that what is being presented cannot be truly grasped unless there is a full-scale production, made the reading process less than satisfactory. As well, there is at times an undercutting of dramatic moments or possibilities. Jon and Judy, his wife, argue about his involvement with whales, and the confrontation echoes what has been portrayed in countless movies and plays when someone (usually male) has to take a course of action that goes against common sense or the wish of a (usually female) loved one. Late in the play Jon declares, “I’m the guy, Judy, because there’s no one else,” but this is neither surprising nor incisive. Their clash of wills may be true to life, but as character development it resembles stale workshop advice on how to instill conflict more than living, breathing disagreement. Similarly, when Jon and the dean (never shown) butt heads any potential drama is swept away as quickly as it’s introduced.

It may be that Between Breaths isn’t meant to be a dramatic work but rather an affectionate and respectful bio-play, since Jon, for all his stubbornness, comes out quite well, and Judy “concedes something deep within herself”—that’s a bit mysterious—once she finally understands he is more than “a lecturer… a scientist.”

The play is not a tragedy and Robert Chafe designed its structure to avoid it ending as an “irredeemably sad” piece of work. Instead, he has provided audiences with a celebration of a life given over to helping endangered mammals. As such, it might be seen as preparation for a future screenplay where the real drama of lives on the line—the stuff that, in its present incarnation, occurs underwater and therefore out of sight—can be brought fully before our eyes.

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Seasons Before the War
Bernice Morgan
Running the Goat

 

Shiny and New
Robert Chafe
Breakwater Books

 

 

In the kind of coincidence that can only happen in Newfoundland, two new Newfoundland children’s books have been published, separately, each as a result of choral concert performances.

Lady Cove Women’s Choir first commissioned Governor General Literary Award-winning playwright Robert Chafe’s (Oil and Water, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams) Shiny and New (published by Breakwater Books). It was originally a recitation combined with traditional Christmas music performed by the choir at Gower Street United Church in 2016.

Meanwhile, the Shallaway Youth Choir originally commissioned Thomas Raddall Literary Prize-winning novelist and short-story writer Bernice Morgan’s (Random Passage, Waiting for Time) Seasons Before the War (Running the Goat).

Shiny and New is Robert Chafe’s first middle-grade reader (a chapter book for ages 7-12) and features the artwork of Grant Boland. It is a contemporary story about community and the true Christmas spirit. It is a story of a little girl who has lost her grandmother, whose grandfather is grief-stricken and whose mother is hosting newcomers to the town for dinner. Change and tradition come together in the contemporary Christmas tale.

Morgan’s Seasons Before the War on the other hand celebrates memories of Christmases past, and a childhood in the St. John’s of the late 1930s. Brita Granstöm is the illustrator. This slightly fictionalized telling explores quotidian and seasonal delights: watching fire trucks put out fires at the local dump, going for messages at nearby shops, listening to stories by the kitchen stove, starting school and anticipating Christmas.

Morgan, who was born in pre-confederation Newfound, shows her talent here, displaying this world from the child’s eye while hinting at the changed world on the horizon.

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Find your next read! Here are all the books we’re excited about from 2016:

Little Dogs: New and Selected
By Michael Crummey
House of Anansi Press

Twenty years after the publication of his debut poetry collection, Michael Crummey’s Little Dogs: New and Selected Poems brings new work together with selections from his first four books of poetry.

The poems range from delirious adolescence to mature love, and carry intergenerational reflections on masculine relationships–father to son to grandson. They deal with the presence and the absence of others, the scars and wisdom of long love.

The imagery is consistently and beautifully Newfoundland: the sensory intensity of fishing for cod, for example. Crummey’s writing has long been treasured and these collected works are reason to celebrate.

Mary, Mary
by Lesley Crewe
Nimbus Publishing

Mary, Mary is a funny and charming story of a dysfunctional Cape Breton family, and the irony of the “white sheep” who stands out like a sore thumb.

Mary is everything her family is not: gentle, kind, patient, loyal, polite, good at her job. All around her is volatility, stubbornness, crankiness and too much pride. But Mary’s innate “goodness” drives her into a regretful pattern of working for money, taking care of her unstable family and wondering if something better could ever be possible.

What makes this novel a real joy is the authenticity of the characters. Their flaws and strengths are as real as Cape Breton itself.

All the Things We Leave Behind
by Riel Nason
Goose Lane Editions

In the late 1970s, 17-year-old Violet’s brother disappears. Her parents go looking for clues and she stays home to sell antiques to tourists at their roadside stand.

She is left to reflect on her brother’s absence, to reminisce about his seemingly random bouts of sadnesses–what readers recognize as depression. These memories of her brother’s presence, and the reality of his absence, are haunting, as is the mysterious presence of a white deer, which only Violet has seen.

All the Things looks deeply into depression, loss and mourning, and how we remember complicated relationships after we lose someone.

Four-Letter Words
by Chad Pelley
Breakwater Books

Chad Pelley has described himself as being dedicated to writing “literary page turners.” Interesting then that some of his best work comes in the more character-focused art of the short story, accumulating a bevy of prizes in this form. His first collection of stories focuses on the most intense expression of human emotions, such that desire becomes obsession, love becomes longing and many of the characters misstep their way to regret. It is this unversal feeling, which Pelley evokes so expertly, that makes Four-Letter Words sing.

Two-Man Tent
by Robert Chafe
Breakwater Books

We’ve waited a long time for celebrated playwright Robert Chafe’s debut collection of short stories, which are linked by a long-distance relationship and its related emails, texts and online chat sessions. It’s 21st-century dialogue the way only a brilliant–GG-winning–playwright could deliver it.

These stories, reminiscent of Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad in their willingness to challenge convention, fully engage and absorb, so as to quickly allay any fears about form.

The Most Heartless Town in Canada
by Elaine McCluskey
Anvil Press

Atlantic Canadians already appreciate the theme of this novel: judging a place with little comprehension of it and its people. McCluskey is the perfect witness to this theme, as she has long written sympathatically about society’s forgotten castaways, brought them to life on the page and showed them in their darkest and brightest glory. Extending this type of characterization to an entire town, one all-too-casually written off by chic big-city drive-by tourist types, comes naturally to a writer with her abilities.

McCluskey plays the tensions of big-city superiority complexes and small-town pride and resilience beautifully, and with great humour.

The Last Half of the Year
by Paul Rowe
Killick Press

When literary luminaries like Kathleen Winter start praising, you have to like a book’s chances for success. When that book comes from the keyboard of a writer whose debut novel was shortlisted for the Winterset Award and the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage and History Award, one expects a captivating story well told.

Paul Rowe, an actor and writer from St. John’s, delivers just that with The Last Half of the Year, which won the Winterset Award. What will strike readers is the craft with which Rowe weaves the themes of the story – the idyllic rural childhood, the dark humour of a father and son’s shadowed impacts on one another, the harshness of leaving home, the reckless folly of youth – with the topical turbulence of the 1970s and varied sentiments on the war.

The Angel’s Jig
by Daniel Poliquin, translation by Wayne Grady
Goose Lane Editions

What a delight when a work of fiction teaches a history lesson or, more descriptively, pulls back the wool from our eyes about the chastity of our past.

The Angel’s Jig is a tale of the adventures of one particularly engaging elderly man who has been auctioned several times, and may be again before his time is through. Despite his situation, he finds colour in the tales he tells and comfort in the people who surround him at each stop.

Written by one of the best French writers in Canada (Poliquin has won or been shortlisted for many of the major literary prizes here), this translation is a joy to read and opens eyes about this dubious practice of the past.

The Porridge Is Up!: Stories from my Childhood
by Dale McIsaac with illustrations by Jessica Shepherd
Acorn Press

The title of this collection of stories from McIsaac’s childhood comes from a favourite expression of his father, a Prince Edward Island farmer. “The porridge is up!” he’d holler from the bottom of his stairs up to the four girls and six boys–in three double bunk beds–meaning get up, eat and get to work.

McIsaac celebrates the up and downs of growing up in a small and tight-knit community.

The 15 stories in this collection were, like all of Robert Munsch’s many children’s books, pre-tested aloud on a young audience, McIsaac’s junior high school students. They are slices of life but that the teller’s skill make extraordinary.

I Am a Truck
by Michelle Winters
Invisible Publishing

I Am a Truck is a mystery of considerable depth. And it is also very funny.

It is the first novel of Saint John New Brunswick’s Michelle Winters, who has previously been nominated for a Journey Prize for her short fiction.

In Truck, Agathe Lapointe’s husband disappears, along with his beloved pickup truck, on their 20th wedding anniversary. What follows is as much about the mystery of his disappearance as it is about the protagonist’s response–becoming more involved with new friends, rock and roll and people who know more than they let on–and the love story between two distinctly Acadian characters.

What we are left with is a rare combination of suspense, humour and insight into the nature of love.

Bet On Me: Leading and Succeeding in Business and in Life
by Annette Verschuren
Harper Collins

Annette Verschuren is an astute business mind, having led Home Depot Canada’s expansion from 19 to 179 stores. Here, we get both memoir and insights into how professionals can more fully embrace and leverage the strengths they already have to achieve breakthrough results.

The book is full of practical insights from someone with a track record of business success. The most fascinating chapter is the one in which Verschuren talks about all the sexism women face in the workplace, but also suggests that being a woman in a senior role can be made into a competitive advantage, and she explains how she did just that.

Nebooktook: In the Woods
by Mike Parker
Pottersfield Press

Nova Scotia’s most beloved outdoor enthusiast, Mike Parker, is back to pay homage to the province’s wealth of natural resources–but not the kind you merely cut or haul or harvest. In Nebooktook, a Mi’kmaw word meaning “in the woods,” Parker focuses on a much more intrinsic, even spiritual value, associated with the wilderness.

Parker takes many tacks in making this point, looking at ecology, history, philosophy, art and ideology.

As in his other works, Parker accompanies his words with hundreds of archival images that provide insightful glimpses into the way we were.

Waiting for Still Water
by Susan White
Acorn Press

After a crisis at work, BC Child Protection caseworker Rachel Garnham is forced to take a “break,” as her supervisor calls it. She returns to her childhood foster home.

The farm at Walton Lake in New Brunswick is run by tenderhearted Amelia. It quickly becomes clear to Rachel that, over the course of her four-year absence, the woman’s memory has begun to fail.

As everyone struggles around her, Rachel begins to worry that Amelia’s condition will have consequences for the new foster girls at the farm. Her patchwork family comes together in the face of adversity, coping with loss and grief.

Where the Rivers Meet
by Danny Gillis
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing

Where the Rivers Meet ratchets the tension to its most taut in its mythical northern Cape Breton setting. At the heart of it is a boy who finds a Mi’kmaq relic. Its discovery–that of gold on Mi’kmaq land–brings longstanding religious, racial and land-based conflicts to a boil.

As tense as the situation is the rapid-fire language play by Gillis, who channels beat poets and Mark Twain to present a frank portrayal of childhood wonder and boyhood competition within a pack mentality. Each character within these linguistic onslaughts is fully realized and realistic.

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Blank bookcover with clipping path

This anthology, Breakwater’s third devoted to plays, each edited by Denyse Lynde, contains a half-dozen works. Accompanied by full production details, it both preserves the texts of ephemeral theatrical experience and provides the mechanics for re-staging them.

Two are one-actor scripts: Robert Chafe, who won a Governor-General’s Award for “Afterimage,” has the droll, disquieting “Belly Up,” where a blind man waits (and waits, and waits) for his mother to come back from the grocery store. Andy Jones, an actor and writer who also has a GG (for children’s literature), has “Albert,” with its titular character home for the weekend. Socially isolated (his only companion is his budgie, Dopple), Albert narrates his weirdly, unexpectedly fantastic, predicament.

In Berni Stapleton’s “Rum For the Money,” three men in a boat are attempting to smuggle a load of rum from St. Pierre to NL’s south coast. The sea is calm but their motor is unreliable and the RCMP cutter is on the prowl.

Aiden Flynn’s “The Monk” is a two-hander with a young Irish monk and an aged Viking boatbuilder exchanging their differing beliefs and the life stories.

Edward Riche, also a screenwriter and novelist, has “Hail,” a tight, character-rich thriller with four middle-aged men brought together by their shared responsibility for a crime committed when they were university students. The tension is tactile: line by line Riche ratchets up the stakes.

Finally, Lisa Moore adapted “February,” her novel that won Canada Reads 2013. She did a skillful job translating the work to stage (incidentally its cast of seven is the biggest here). It’s a slimmer narrative but still full of affecting resonance.

The Breakwater Book of Contemporary Newfoundland Plays: Volume 3
Edited by Denyse Lynde
Breakwater Books