Theatre of fish : travels through Newfoundland and Labrador

by John Gimlette

Paper Book, 2006

Status

Available

Call number

917.18045

Library's review

Indeholder "Illustrations and Maps", "Acknowledgements", "Glossary", "Introduction", "Prologue", "Act I. St John's", "Act II. Planting Avalon (and reaping the storm)", "Act III. North with the Floaters", "Act IV. Down Labrador", "ACT V. Back via Old New France", "Act VI. Baby Bonus", "Epilogue",
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 "Afterword", "Further Reading".

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Tags

Travels

Genres

Publication

London : Arrow, 2006.

Description

John Gimlette's journey across this awesome and often brutal western extreme of the Americas broadly mirrors that of Dr Eliot Curwen, his great-grandfather, who spent a summer there as a doctor in 1893, and who was witness to some of the most beautiful ice and cruellest poverty in the British Empire. Using Curwen's extraordinarily frank journal John Gimlette revisits the places the doctor encountered and along the way explores his own links with this brutal land. shores. Descended from last-hope Irishmen, outlaws, navy deserters and fishermen from Jersey and Dorset, these 'outporters' are a warm, salty, witty and exuberant breed. They often speak with the accent and idioms of the original colonists, sometimes Shakespearean, sometimes just plain impenetrable. Theirs is a bizarre story; of houses (or 'saltboxes') that can be dragged across land or floated over the sea; of eating habits inherited from seventeenth-century sailors (salt beef, rum pease-pudding and molasses); of Labradorians sealed in ice from October to June; of fishing villages that produced a diva to sing with Verdi and of their own illicit, impromptu dramatics, the Mummers.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member teaperson
There are some travel books where you wonder that every person the writer met had an amazing story to tell. Then there are books where it seems like the author puts in everyone he meets, regardless of whether they're interesting or not. That's the case here. The author's "At the Tomb of the
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 Inflatable Pig" fell into the first category, which made me have high expectations here. But the history here isn't as interesting, and there's a lot more of the author in it (and he doesn't make himself and the tangentially-related family history seem as interesting). I kept waiting for the twist that would make all the history hang together in an interesting way, but it didn't happen.
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3 more
LibraryThing member nessreader
Sometimes travel writers, trying to make their tours sound wacky and amusing, reduce the inhabitants to a series of mentally stunted freaks. I found his voice in this patronising, narcissistic, and odious.

Gimlette did a lot of background reading for this, and I wished often that I was reading his
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 source material on the history of Newfoundland, rather than his filter on it. I also wanted to know about Canada instead of his family history and tenuous ancestral connections with the place.
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LibraryThing member SFToohey
Could not put it down. John Gimlette is a passionate, endlessly curious guide through Newfoundland and Labrador, two strange places that remain strange to me, but...now, thanks to Gimlette, there's specificity and texture and history with the strange. If you're hesitant to read what is called
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 "travel writing", start here, and you'll realize what is possible.
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LibraryThing member MiaCulpa
I first read "At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig", John Gimlette's ode to Paraguay, and realised that further reading of Gimlette's oeuvre was required.

That led me to "Theatre of Fish", Gimlette's travelogue/history of Newfoundland and Labrador, once an independent nation but now part of Canada.
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 Whereas "... Inflatable Pig" was a (somewhat darkly) humorous look at Paraguay, Gimlette ratchets up the depressive elements as we get the horrible history of Newfoundland; the cold, the poverty, the over-reliance on a cod based economy that came crashing down, the misery of the Indigenous peoples.

Gimlette introduces us to his great-grandfather, who travelled around Newfoundland in the nineteenth century, and then follows in his footsteps. He gets to meet direct descendants of the locals his forebear met and name checks many of the famous people who spent time in Newfoundland (no matter how fleetingly) over the years.

Although not quite as enjoyable as "Tomb of the Inflatable Pig", "Theatre of Fish" still led me to hunt down copies of Gimlette's other books, and surely that's as high a compliment as you could wish for.
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Subjects

Gimlette, John, Newfoundland and Labrador. Travel 1963-
Newfoundland and Labrador Description and travel
Newfoundland and Labrador Social life and customs

Language

English

Original language

English

Original publication date

2005-09-06

Physical description

xiv, 365 p.; 19.5 cm

ISBN

0099453258 / 9780099453253

Local notes

Omslag: Ikke angivet
Omslaget viser en fiskebåd med to personer ombord
Omslagsfoto: National Geographic
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi

Pages

xiv; 365

Library's rating

Rating

(24 ratings; 3.3)

DDC/MDS

917.18045

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