A Splinter in the Heart

Hugh Oliver is Editor-in-Chief, OISE Press.

Two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry,
Purdy is here publishing his first novel. The setting is Trenton, on the
Bay of Quinte near Belleville. The protagonist is a youth of sixteen
who, in an emotional year, develops from a gawky schoolboy into a
self-assured young man. The battery of characters in the supporting cast
include his mother, a schoolboy rival, his grandfather (whose death he
witnesses), his grandfather’s ancient cronies, a village idiot, and
his first girlfriend.

The plot is largely episodic and the substance more like that of an
extended short story. The strength of the novel lies, not surprisingly,
in its poetic imagery and often powerful descriptive prose. It concludes
with a historical drama: the local munitions factory catches fire and
blows up with a force reminiscent of the Halifax Harbour explosion. The
fire provides the occasion for a long-awaited secondary drama, in which
our hero has a running race against his schoolboy rival.

The novel is not without interest, but I do not see Purdy adding a
Governor-General’s Award for fiction to those he has received for
poetry.