Thaw

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

Thaw is a kind of Coronation Street set in a Newfoundland outport—not
a typical outport, of course, but one as bizarrely imagined as
Coronation Street itself. In the main, we are presented with more than
300 pages depicting the daily lives of the people of Cupboard Cove,
caricatures in stereotypical situations. We see (but we rarely empathize
with) them as they eat, argue, booze, make love, shoot moose, snare
rabbits, and engage in what Lundrigan imagines to be (but that, in
reality, is probably not) the normal life of Newfoundlanders.

Throughout there runs a thematic thread, difficult to discern but
seemingly having to do with the way the past impinges on the present and
how human selfishness manifests itself in unexpected ways. This is not
to say that Lundrigan is a poor writer; quite to the contrary, her prose
is sharp and her images are clear and powerful. It’s just that her
characters are so stilted and coarse, her plot is so predictable, and
the whole story is so long and tedious that whatever beauties of
language or novelties of style may be present (and there are many) are
lost in a maze of fictional absurdities.