Yet Michael Crummey's poetic voice and landscape are his own' - Ron Rash, author of Serena 'I am reminded of Dickens, not just the nineteenth-century setting and the imperiled children, but the artfulness: brilliant plot, unforgettable minor characters, perfect pacing. extraordinary novel, emotionally precise, vivid in its portrayal of nature, and subtle in its exploration of the relationship between life and story' - Wall Street Journal Michael Crummey writes like an avenging angel, never putting a word wrong' - Emma Donoghue, author of Room 'An Adam and Eve struggle to make sense of a world that's somewhere between Eden and Hell. Publisher: Bedford Square Publishers ISBN: 9780857304261 Number of pages: 288 Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm MEDIA REVIEWS

But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested. Muddling through the severe round of the seasons, through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family’s boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to help them survive. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. In centuries past, a brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated outport cove on Newfoundland’s northern coastline. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves.

A riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. The Innocents is richly imagined and compulsively readable.

The innocents michael crummey