Waiting for Time

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British Views
of Canada, 1880–1914.

This sequel to Bernice Morgan’s critically acclaimed first novel,
Random Passage, continues the author’s exploration—physical and
spiritual—of the interconnected lives of the Andrews family of Cape
Random, Newfoundland. Lavinia Andrews is drawn back to her roots by the
discovery of her namesake’s almost–200-year-old journal. From the
diary of the first Lavinia Andrews, corrected by her brother’s wife
through the medium of her great-granddaughter, come fascinating
revelations of past relationships (impinging on present ones) that force
the modern Lavinia to reassess everything she has known and believed. In
the process, the reader too is forced to reassess his or her view of
past events, and to perhaps marvel at (but also regret) just how much
the past “overshadows the present.”

This novel is full of vibrant characters—and truer to the
Newfoundland psyche than The Shipping News ever was. Morgan writes with
clarity and elegance. Although some judicious editing would have made
Waiting for Time a more readable book, it is nevertheless well worth the
effort as is.