Flesh and Blood

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.

Award-winning poet Michael Crummey has drawn on his Newfoundland
experiences (mainly in the mining town of Buchans) in creating these 13
stories about lives “above ground” in the small mining town of Black
Rock. The similarity of theme (mainly of exile) provides a unity of
design and a consistency of tone that is both a strength and a weakness.
On the one hand, there is something captivating about the recurring
theme of how love (albeit sometimes painful love) endures in the face of
exile, estrangement, and misunderstanding. On the other hand, the
repetition of theme, the insistent negativity, and the lack of variety
create a monotony that Crummey avoided entirely in his book of poems,
Hard Light. This is not to say that Crummey is not a good storyteller,
but rather simply that the sheer inventiveness that characterizes his
poetry is strangely absent in these short stories.