A Charm Against the Pain: An Anthology of All New Writing from Newfoundland

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

The subtitle shown on this book’s cover is An Anthology of All New
Writing from Newfoundland. But a more specific subtitle—An Anthology
of New Writing from the Newfoundland Writers’ Guild—appears on its
title page. Whichever is the correct one, this collection of short
stories, poems, and personal memoirs does indeed betoken a flourishing
writing community probably unequalled anywhere else in Canada. One is
struck by the non-parochial nature of the writing: it certainly reflects
in part a distinct Newfoundland culture and sensibility but also
reveals, in several pieces by talented newcomers, a very cosmopolitan
psyche. It is eclecticism at its best.

Most of the 29 contributors are Newfoundlanders born and bred, and we
can enjoy the flavour of an outport upbringing as in Laura Morry
Williams’s “My Ferryland Childhood,” or the poignant loss of that
kind of lifestyle in Bernice Morgan’s excellent piece, “My
Mother’s Poem,” or the lopsided view of an Irish-Newfoundland wake
in M.T. Dohaney’s “Viewing Not Advised” (a story worth buying the
book for alone). We can also share Roberta Buchanan’s South
African/Rhodesian childhood experiences as she vivifies them in a
remarkable story called “The Killing Jar” or Georgina Olivere
Queller’s intriguing poem, “when I finally saw an elephant.”

There is much to enjoy here, some of which is exceptionally good
(Danette Dooley’s “Goodbye Percy Janes” is brilliant), only a few
of which are mediocre, and none of which is really bad. That is quite an
accomplishment, one of which the Writers Guild is undoubtedly proud, and
of which we are the lucky beneficiaries.