Vigil

by Susie Taylor

The interconnected stories of Vigil are packed with uncomfortable characters caught in situations of complex morality, with each piece both a chapter in the overall story and also a stand-alone investigation of the concepts of addiction, crime, redemption, and complicity.  Vigil is a collection of interconnected short stories set in the fictional, ex-urban community of Grace Harbour, a town that rests between the ocean and the wilderness. A beautiful but harsh environment with few employers and even fewer social resources, residents of Grace Harbour must make difficult choices to survive, and these decisions set the characters swinging between self-serving greed and selfless bravery. In Grace Harbour, every action has a ripple effect that spreads through the community, making everyone complicit in the lives and deaths of their neighbours. 

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Canada

240 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2024

About the author

Susie Taylor’s debut novel Even Weirder Than Before is published with Breakwater Books. She won the 2015 NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. Taylor’s short stories have appeared in Geist, Prism International, The Fiddlehead, Room Magazine, Riddle Fence and elsewhere.

Reviews

[Colleen Crawley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so well written that I am praying it gets the attention it deserves. It should definitely be up for consideration for the Giller and the GG this year. Highly recommend.

[Kim Driscoll · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series of stories is brilliant. So complex and richly layered with characters who are living their lives and getting by. It's hilariously funny in parts and beyond sad in others. I absolutely loved it.

[Colin Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful collection. I loved it.

[Moira · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite books so far this year. Such an authentic clear voice - funny, sad, felt like home.

[Margaret Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the opening pages, Taylor brilliantly personifies a small suffering Newfoundland town -- a mom claiming geriatric pregnancies, aging gracelessly, and done with face lifts & self improvement but she still loves her delinquent drug-addled children.

The 16 ensuing short stories explore the lives of those children struggling to grow up, stories that are interconnected by a missing young man who's "a symptom of all that diseased this place." What happened to Stevie is the question that drives the stories forward and also a delight as Stevie keeps popping up in hilarious and disconcerting fashion.

The boys and men in these stories love their town and their moms and their beer and drugs and sometimes each other.

The writing is beautiful. I loved this collection.

[Sarah Bruer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A relative of the author loaned me a copy of this book, which sat on my to be read shelf for about eight months. When I finally opened it up to start reading, I couldn’t stop. The series of stories were full of captivating characters whose lives were all cleverly connected. A few times I found myself thinking this is a book with such detail you almost want to go back and read it again to catch anything you missed at first. While it isn’t my normal genre and I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, I am nevertheless giving it five stars because it captured my interest nevertheless.

[Patricia Burgess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vigil is a collection of interconnected short stories set in the fictional, ex-urban community of Bay Mal Verde, a town that rests between the ocean and the wilderness in Newfoundland, Canada. A beautiful but harsh environment with few employers and even fewer social resources, residents of Bay Mal Verde must make difficult choices (drugs, murder, rape, betrayal, lies, friendships) to survive, and these decisions set the characters swinging between self-serving greed and selfless bravery.

[Peter Hanes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the interconnection of the stories, I would recommend reading this in as few sittings as you can, I put it down for a while and when I went back, found it hard to visualize who was who, but that’s on me, not the writer, well crafted portrait of a small community going through tough times and how events resonate over time

[Karen Dwyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book though the content was harsh at times. Sad portrayal of some small towns and how they orbit around drug use. But each of the characters had heart and the author pulled empathy out of me for every one of them.

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing is good, just did not enjoy the story lines

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the first story tells us, Bay Mal Verde loves all her children but knows she has let them down. This fictional small Newfoundland town, the setting of Vigil, is an important character in Susie Taylor’s book of linked stories, and her residents face hard-scrabble lives filled with economic uncertainty, where addiction is a way of life. Still, they survive, or most of them do. Though tragedy lurks, there is humour and even love in the way Taylor depicts the good, bad and sometimes ugly trajectory of their lives. She’s a marvellous raconteur, in true Newfie style.

[Nicole Dawe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal multi perspective book. Susie also captures so clearly what it means to be from a rural community in NL and how that has changed over the last decades.

[Wayne Woodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think being a Newfoundlander helps in the appreciation of this book of connected short stories centering around life in a small town but closely connected to the outside world.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Linda Churchill · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

[Cheryl Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully strange and fascinating. Didn't want to put it down but one has to sleep sometime. Tried to read it slowly and failed.

[Glenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew I was in for a great ride right from the opening story of this collection. Susie Taylor brings small town Newfoundland to life in this series of short stories, each building on the next with a set of beautifully crafted characters who learn first hand the devastation that drugs can inflict on a community. There are no cookie-cutter characters here and we get to see the human side of one.
As an author who has just signed to have my own novel published by the same publishers as this one, (Breakwater Books) I am feeling even more excited knowing that my novel will get to sit on a shelf close to Susie's. Definitely recommend this one.

[Sara Power · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book: Connected stories really felt more like a novel to me. The characters are real and walking on the earth, and the prose is frank and rhythmic and deeply considerate.

A one-sitting read for me. Sad when it was over. Love this author.