Gaff Topsails

by Patrick Kavanagh

A Canadian author presents a rich portrait of a small Irish-Catholic parish on the coast of Newfoundland in 1948, where Father MacMurrough tends a flock of dreamers, mutes, lonely women, and lighthouse keepers. A first novel. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Patrick Kavanagh was born at St. John's, Newfoundland. Based mainly in Ottawa, he has spent long periods abroad. While living in Beijing during 1992 to 1995 he acted as research assistant to the Chinese translators of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and at the same time he completed his own first novel, Gaff Topsails.

In recent years he has focused on projects related to travel, international development, and human rights. From 2006 to 2012 he was a staff writer with Canada's International Development Research Centre.

He has been a supporter of Amnesty International, PEN Canada, the Ottawa International Writers’ Festival, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont.

Reviews

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is an incredible novel. Patrick Kavanagh is something of a Joycean, at least enough of one to have helped translate Ulysses into Mandarin. If James Joyce had written a novel about Newfoundland, this could've been what it looked like. Kavanagh has taken one day--as in Ulysses--and threaded his many characters through it. It's 24 June 1948, the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist. It's also Sweetheart's Day, a local fete, the longest day of the year and 1st day of summer (we're told) as well as the last day of school. There are more similarities to Ulysses than I can mention here. Some of the most indigenous features of Ulysses are represented, though. Woven through the narrative is a soliloquy in the form of dialogue spoken by a housewife to various visitors to her home. I'd learned long ago that the Canadian maritime coast had been heavily settled by the Irish. Kavanagh emphasizes the Irishness of his characters and the Catholicism they reference their lives to. These people are as Irish as Dubliners. I almost laughed out loud when Kavanagh described a beer bottle opening with a Pok! sound. Joyce famously used the word as bottles near a fireplace pop open in "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," a story in Dubliners. Chapter XI here is a kind of Wandering Rocks chapter, capturing each character at exactly noon. It's there, at the exact center of the novel, that God has a presence, I think, just as He does in Ulysses when the thunder booms and Bloom interprets it as the voice of God--"A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled, back. Loud on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammer hurler. Came now the storm that hist his heart." We're told that's the exact center of Ulysses. But when God appears at the center of Gaff Topsails, he does so in the guise of Father MacMurrough come to address the class on the last day of school, his divinity emphasized by a young girl's anticipation of him and perception of his god-like arrival out of the doorway's light. Light itself plays an important part in the novel. John the Baptist is commemorated as the Bringer of Light. Kavanagh's novel takes place in a tiny village resting in a bowl of a bay filled with the light of a midsummer's day. There's more light than dark on this day, and he has his characters notice its changes. The shifting tones of light affects everyone. As does the presence of the iceberg sitting off the coast. It dominates the view seaward and represents different things to the characters--to the priest his dissolving faith, to Mary romance because the boy she's attracted to is there, to Kevin the safe world of make-believe. The prose Kavanagh puts on the page to make this magic is exquisite. Whether he's describing the death of a seagull or the fickle patterns of light, he writes with power and authority. And yet he can tell the truth tenderly--Mary looks at her reflection in a marsh; opening her dress she sees a woman, closing it she sees a girl. I'm one of those readers who consider the Ulysses of Joyce to be the standard for modern literature. So it's no wonder to me that Kavanagh's use of it thrills me so. It's as if Ulysses is the prism through which Kavanagh's imagination is refracted to form this delicious little parish uniting the pagan and Christian worlds, igniting the colors bringing the community and populace to life. Sadly Kavanagh has never published another novel. He's been silent since Gaff Topsails was published in 1996. I'd come to it then, attracted by the attention it got and by its comparisons to Joyce. I'd never forgotten it, always intending to find time to reread it. Now the search for even more time begins again.

[Wisewebwoman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Holy metaphors Batman!

I persisted even though my eyeballs were hurting to 50 pages and I stopped with a whimper. I just could not endure.

"A priest moving delicately like a puppet afraid of unhinging his limbs."

"Dog like a warthog, then like a sphinx".

"Stunned by the concussion, the sea staggered backwards."

"Atmosphere strangely dazed."

Not one character engaging enough to ignite even the tiniest flame to persevere.

Every action of every character painfully drawn out, one guy building 3 cigarettes took pages.

1/5 I wish there were minus stars.

[Dark-Draco · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you liked 'The Shipping News' by Annie Proulx, then you'll enjoy this. The whole story takes place on Midsummers day, 1948, in a small village in Newfoundland. The villagers wake to find an iceberg stranded in the bay and their stories all come to life aginst its backdrop. There's the priest, a newcomer not sure that he likes his new life, or life at all. Michael, mute and a dreamer, climbing the iceberg and falling in love. Mad Jonny the Light, a hero and yet dispised by the town. Hestia, the wife watching for her fisherman husband from the salvaged chair of a shipwreck. Pious Kevin, haunted by monsters of his own making. And many more characters to brood on.

I quite enjoyed this. It is one of those stories where not a lot actually happens, yet it still takes you on a journey. The characters were fabulous and the whole area was described brilliantly. My favourite chapeter was 'The Kingdom of God' which tells how the village was founded. In fact, the chapters are a bit haphazard, some only two or three pages long, others took a weekend to read!!

[Gphatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, heady, thoughtful book. Full of rich prose and a genuine love of language that just doesn't exist in most novels these days. I could have sworn it was a novel from the early 1900's, but instead, I now believe that Kavanagh truly paid attention to the stories of people who grew up during that time. He has the nuances down; the colloquialsisms; the pervading ties to Christianity. I feel like I'm back in my mother's Ireland, listening by the fireside to the old folks tell tales, and not always gleaning everything.
I had to give up about 2/3 of the way through because I had been attempting to read this book during the sleepless years of Sasha & Tintin. Restarting, going over stuff multiple times, rereading for clarity -- all made this book too difficult. But I will finish it one day.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author not only shares his name with an Irish poet of some renown, he also was apparently involved in the Herculean task of translating Ulysses into Chinese (!). The influence of Joyce on his cadence, timing, indirection, use of mythological elements, and of course the fact that the events detailed in these pages take place in the space of one day, all nod (bow?) in the direction of Joyce's great novel. The pagan and the Christian mix and mingle throughout this novel in true Celtic fashion, and the presence of a melting but ominous iceberg that has floated to visit the waters off shore of the fictional Newfoundland town in which most of the events take place on the feast day of St. John the Baptist (the annual date of celebration for Quebec nationalists also, as it happens) forms a fitting backdrop to remind the reader of the elemental forces that bracket and define the lives of the island's inhabitants to this day. This is an ambitious work with some really fine descriptive writing throughout, but the characters end up coming off more as phantoms than as humans, more archetype than flesh and blood, and the author's penchant for not saying directly what can be poetically signified made this read more of a slog than it was probably meant to be.

[Nick McLaren · Rating 1 out of 5]

I need to start seeing ‘like James Joyce’ as a warning label.
I don’t doubt this is very good to those who like that style but it was not for me.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is set in a small Irish Catholic fishing village on the coast of Newfoundland during a single day -- June 24, 1948. It is the day that celebrates the feast of John the Baptist and during this day, the author traces the life and thoughts of a small group of people who live in the village.

Father MacMurrough is a lonely priest, a restless middle aged man who has recently arrived on the island. He has come from the New Guinea missions and although he hoped to be posted to China, he has been sent to this lonely place, a place that resembles Ireland, the land he fled. He spends his time wandering the headlands, brooding over a failed love affair earlier in his life. Mary is the teenager who loathes her mother and is just beginning to explore her sexuality. She is practicing pagan rituals in the hope of securing a husband on this day, also known as “Sweetheart’s Day. Another character, the wife of a fisherman , cradles her baby and waits for her husband. She sits on top of her roof facing the sea, searching the horizon and waiting for her husband’s return. Michael Barron is a mute young man who has fallen in love and yearns for a life different from the one he has with his mates Gus and Wish who spend their time fishing, talking about women and getting into trouble. Michael’s younger brother Kevin is a pious altar boy who is bullied by the older boys and who is haunted and chased by whispering monsters. Johnny The Light is the mad, drunken and crippled lighthouse keeper who was once a hero and saved many lives but has been haunted by the experience. He stumbles through his day, followed by phantoms of his past.


The other character is not human. It is the land itself with its salty air, beautiful wildflowers, plentiful berries and its deep bluish green sea in which an iceberg looms melting and drifting offshore. It is the land that provides the stunning context as the day unfolds. It is forever present, dominating the narrative.

In the middle of the novel a tale reveals how the village was founded. Tomas Croft, a young, sixth century Irish castaway landed on the island and established and dominated a wild unruly kingdom he called his own. It was only when a Catholic missionary arrived that a well ordered and pious society emerged and the quiet law abiding parish emerged.

This is not a novel of action or one with a complex plot. Nothing really happens. The narrative simply meanders and winds slowly, moving from one character to the next, recounting their thoughts and recording their colloquial dialogue with its salty vernacular. There are incredible descriptions of the land, the sea and the sky that surround this large looming landscape. But the prose is well done, reflecting the culture of the inhabitant’s stubborn Catholicism, their sense of isolation from the mainland and their modest expectations of life. The sea is constantly in the background, a source of both good and bad fortune. As the day comes to a close, the inhabitants move down to the beach where they repeat a long held ritual which has always been carried out on this special day.

The reading can get very ponderous at times, burdened by the descriptions and introspective musings of its characters. But it is an interesting read.

[Keira · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think three and a half stars would be appropriate. It took me a while to get used to the shifting perspectives, but once I did, the story took off. It has a definite sense of place and time - I haven't read Joyce, so I can't comment on the similarities, but every character has a very distinct voice of their own & you really get to know the history that shapes them and the desires that pull them.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kavanagh is attempting to paint a big picture of outport Newfoundland, in a similar vein to Michael Crummey with Galore, but is not as powerful. However, he did it first, and thus he should be commended. Overall, an interesting story.