Blackstrap Hawco

by Kenneth J. Harvey

Fifteen years in the making, this book is the one Canada’s “heavyweight champ of brash and beautiful literature” was meant to write. An epic masterwork about Newfoundland’s working class, Blackstrap Hawco spans more than a century in gorgeous and widely varied prose, reminding us that even when writing about the degradation of identity and language, Harvey does it magnificently.

Named in a moment of anger, Blackstrap Hawco is heir to an island dominion picked over by its adoptive nation. From the arrivals of the indentured Irish to the Victorian drawing rooms of the English merchants, from the perilous seal hunt to the raucous iron ore mines, from a notorious disaster at sea to the relocation of outport communities, the family legend might be all his people have left to live for. But as Blackstrap Hawco – a novel that will consume you in its dazzling swirl of voices, legends and beautiful hearsay – testifies, a story this haunting, this powerful, might just be enough.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Historical Fiction, Literature

848 pages, Hardcover

First published June 19, 2008

About the author

International bestselling author Kenneth J. Harvey's books are published in Canada, the US, the UK, Russia, Germany, China, Japan, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and France. He has won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Winterset Award, Italy's Libro Del Mare, and has been nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and twice for both the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. His editorials have appeared on CBC Radio, in The Times (London) and in most major Canadian newspapers, including The Globe & Mail, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Telegraph Journal, Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star and Halifax Daily News. Harvey sits on the board of directors of the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

The blurbs on this book compare the author to James Joyce, William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Pretty heady company but the comparisons are not without merit. This is an epic novel in every sense of the word. It's 829 pages long, spans the years 1886-2007(set mainly in Newfoundland) and is composed of many different writing styles; from straight forward narrative to meandering ramblings that are in fact reminiscent of Joyce.

Harvey is in fact a very daring author who isn't afraid to take chances and this novel, which took 15 years to write is a masterpiece. My many thanks to my Goodreads friend Karen Brissette who turned me on to Kenneth J Harvey in the first place. I can't wait to see what he writes next.

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crown-sanctioned
scroungers.
Out of foreign ports.
Overseas.
To vanquish.
God's country.
New Found Land.
Beneath a crow-wing flap
of a flag.
Of unholy bone-gnawers:
Piecemeal progress.
Who from where?

At 848 pages, Blackstrap Hawco is many books, not just in length, but in tone and style and subject and theme, and taken all together, this is a rare book that deserves the label "masterpiece" in every sense of the word.

Blackstrap Hawco can be divided into more or less two halves: the first skipping around the history of four generations of Hawcos, using the various first-person voices of the characters that each chapter focuses on; and the second half is a linear account of the title character, told in a third-person-omniscient style, and overlapping the timeline from the first section wherever Blackstrap was present. What links the two is the history and folklore of Newfoundland and Blackstrap's position as a near mythological character; the last true Newfoundlander; an indomitable force who is present at all the significant historical events that occur within his late twentieth to early twenty-first century lifespan. The first chapters can be in a halting, choppy style:

A man's bulky presence. Charging up behind. Out of sight. Muttering something. Reciting words. And her scream. Brought upon itself. Shrill. Alert. Coming to her from somewhere else. Deep inside.

Or in a stream-of-consciousness, without capital letters or periods (this example is not quite half of one paragraph):

shab reardon bellowed, his greyish-white hair combed neatly with the grease of brylcream, his stout face that of a handsome, charismatic man, gone bad from drink and a heritage of brutality, a guttural howl in the name of some forefather's forefather, down the line of ramshackle midnight terror suffered by their children and their children and theirs, usually a quiet, meek soul, a man who drank and brooded alone for hours, watching where his hands were set against the table, meant to be left alone while studying his glass and thinking on self-shaped shadows…

And in one of the last chapters, the following is the writing style used for a fifth generation Hawco, a modern day teenager:

He tears opN d padded Nvelop n pulls ot a thik bunch of folded sheets of ppr. There's also an old b%k. myt B wrth somit. He stands der n opens d b%k. d ppr r yellO. Old. d wrds r ritN ot n old styl rytN.

More than anything, Blackstrap Hawco is a book of atmosphere, with many characters who are mentally ill, or haunted, or otherwise disengaged from their own lives, and it makes for a consistently uncomfortable read. The history of the Hawco family is the purported premise, but with rapes and secret adoptions and questionable paternities, it's unclear if there's any continuity in the bloodline from one generation to the next. And characters don't want to learn their family history: journals are burned, letters returned, leads are not followed. When an old woman in Toronto promises to tell Blackstrap the legend of the screaming woman who was pregnant for thirteen months, he doesn't even realise that's the story of his own great-grandmother; and yet, that might be a relationship in name only, and a made up name at that.

And Newfoundland itself is captured so well here; the land, its people, its ghosts. I've read other books that mention The Ocean Ranger disaster or William Croaker or Christmas Eve mummers, and I've read other books that encompass the modern history of Newfoundland , but I've never experienced these things as I have here through the person of Blackstrap Hawco; the man who can't be killed. There's sealing and cod-jigging, moose on the highway, hauling loads of spruce out of the interminable forests, and while women cook the bread in wood fired ovens and have their babies in their own beds, the men die, or drown, or disappear into the legendary black sea (which are three different events). The water, water, is everywhere, and while it provides sustenance, it is also the constant threat that surrounds the island:

Water gushes aboard. Weather cut from chaos takes the space. A snatch of a million fleeting razors. The freezing ocean as water and wind. The blast in the face. Skin and bones dead in seconds. The chewing howl. Eyes frozen fully shut. And the boat sinks. The men are in the water. Arms and legs useless to swim. They sink. Silently, they give in. Men gone from themselves.

Author Kenneth J. Harvey took fifteen years to write Blackstrap Hawco, and throughout, he writes as though the assembled stories come from actual diaries, interviews, and historical documents related to the Hawcos. As with any good yarn, there's enough verifiable in this story to make a reader want to believe in the possibility of an actual Blackstrap, but this final paragraph in the afterword extends the author's literary manoeuvring:

The (transcomposite) method of writing has been employed so that, as the years rise toward the actual year (2042) when the author is committing these words to paper, more and more of what has been recorded in this book will align with plausibility. In fact, there is only one day in which the underlying premise of this book becomes sound -- January 22, 2042. On any other day, this book simply is not.

So what to make of all that, b'y? This book was long, and at times tedious, and I was often uncomfortable and confused. But it's all in here; everything a person wants to feel in order to understand the Newfie heart, and upon reflection, it couldn't have been told any other way.

[Pooker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I put this book on my BookCrossing wishlist a few years ago, having read and appreciated this author's earlier book, Inside. Well darned if my BookCrossing buddy, gypsysmom, didn't grant my wish.
Now there's one thing to wanting to read and wanting to have read a book and another to actually reading it, especially if the book is about 830 pages and you're a slothful reader like me. So it sat on my shelf for a few years until guilt set in. When a person gives you a book you profess to want, it's only polite to read it.

What made me pick it up this time and actually start reading, I have no idea. It's not only the size of it that's intimidating (and let me tell you the book is a whopper, such that the only time you are physically comfortable reading it is when you are almost exactly in the middle and the pages aren't flipping over to the other side causing a shift in weight sufficient to sink the Titanic.) but the author has prefaced the book with the advice that this is a "transcomposite narrative". A what? A less lazy reader might immediately look this up; Google it. Not I. No. I simply took it as a warning. This book was going to be hard.

It was not an easy read. But forewarned is forearmed. Pen and notepad in hand (actually *at* hand; you need both hands to hold the weighty tome) I commenced. Thirteen days, four full 8 X 11 pages filled with notes, names and ages, dates and arrows, question marks and more arrows, I was done. And... I loved this book.

I was bloody glad I was taking notes though. The first half and then some of the book (referred to as Book 1) spans the time between 1886 and 1992 and traces the colourful and intriguing Hawco/Lambly family history from Ireland to Newfoundland. It does not do so in chronological order, however. Rather, it skips about from this decade to that, relating family and historical events from the perspectives and memories of the various participants. So, as each bit of information from this decade or that was gleaned I had to go to my notes and arrows to confirm that: Aha! Uncle Ace was brother to Francis (a twin in fact). Francis was married to Catherine, Jacob was their son. Then, ah yes, Jacob's wife Emily must get her "refinement" from her upbringing with her parents Alan and Amanda Duncan. Emily and Jacob have three children: Jacob Jr (Junior), Blackstrap and Ruth and, now who the heck are Patrick Lambly and Rose Cavanaugh? Rose gives birth to twins. Eureka! The twins are Francis and Ace Hawco! One might think, especially in the way that I have just related, that this untangling of family relationships would be a tad cumbersome and boring. It is not. It's fascinating because as we untangle relationships, we also sort out, as best we can from what we are told, the tragic events that have befallen this family, the loyalties, the truths and fictions that have ensnared themselves to each other and to Newfoundland. The tragedies are many. Men lost at sea or on the frozen ocean ice, a sick child allowed to die and thrown overboard. The scars are many. Broken legs, lost fingers and toes, lost industry, loss of identity, death in body and/or spirit in traffic accidents, mine explosions, shipwreck, relocation, government policy, greed, sensationalism, and rape, and abuse, and neglect.

What was profoundly interesting to me was the uncertainty was to what was actually true; what was fact and what was fiction. It is not that as a reader I needed to know what was true. I didn't. I know there is never one truth. There are as many truths as there are witnesses, listeners, and readers. It interested me to see how fiction became truth. In the learning of it, in the interpretation of it, in the memory of it, in the belief in it.

Book 2, the next largest portion of the book at 300+ pages, together with the 3rd and 4th books, span the period between 1971 and 2007 and is Blackstrap Hawco's story from the age of 17 to 53. Many of the tales of the previous book are revisited but through present day eyes and the "benefit" of retelling. When Book One opened, Blackstrap's father was virtually at death's door. But once safe at home and the years pass, the incident is both folktale and "just one of those things" one endures. We catch Blackstrap pondering about Patrick Lambly, his grandfather. The story he knows is the Patrick touted a hero for trying to rescue Portugese sailors from a shipwreck. Gone from that truth is the perhaps more likely version whereby Patrick's motives were more lunatic than heroic (is there a difference?)just trying to survive a scavenging expedition in stormy seas to rescue barrels of port from that shipwreck, sailors be damned.

Blackstrap is just a working guy, trying to live a life, loyal to family and tradition, illiterate but seeing no point in becoming otherwise. He's big and brawling, uses his fists in place of any words.
To everyone in his community, he becomes larger than life, a hero, as he rages against "progress", the media, the government. He is Newfoundland. But he is a tragic figure (in the same way as Newfoundland), he doesn't belong in his time, he doesn't know what he wants, he doesn't know what has happened to his life, what's the worth of anything. It is clear that he is a kind person, wants what is best for his women and children and yet he was totally blind to the awful things that happened to the women is his life. And, tragically he was not a father to his own children, who end up being lost to Family Services.

The chapters in this book follow the events and personalities of the times in the "outside world". Some chapters are actually just lists of daily events, at first real, but as the days run on increasingly made-up and nonsensical (although I laughed out loud to learn no events apparently happened on July 29, 1984), all speeding by, I thought, much like a Twitter stream.

The final Book, with its three chapters was most poignant to me as we visit Blackstrap Junior, Agnes (the one woman Blackstrap truly loved and wanted in his life) and Ruth, the daughter Blackstrap never really knew. Junior and Ruth are all but oblivious to their history and their father and family, their lives nothing like what their father would want for them.

The final section of the book is an "acknowledgments" section written by the "author" of the book, Jacob Hawco IV, in 2042. So, somehow, from somewhere, the family has carried on.

I remember as I read Kenneth Harvey's previous book, *Inside* being surprised at his writing style of very short sentences, expecting him to drop that style after the introduction but when he didn't, I settled in, comfortable with it. Harvey uses a multiplicity of styles and voices in Blackstrap Hawco, very short (sometimes only one word) sentences, whole chapters without capitalization, Newfoundlanders' dialect as it would have been spoken ("mudder", "fadder", "b'y"), poetry and song, and even Newfoundlander "text" speak. All of it adds to the depth and richness of the story.

I am ashamed to say that as a Canadian, I never really payed much attention to Newfoundland. Oh I know it became a province of Canada in 1949, was aware of the collapse of cod fishing and that most of the province's citizens were either on the dole or had left to find fortune elsewhere. I think I had in my mind that it was a beautiful province, that somehow making up for misfortune. This book may be fact, may be fiction, but the reading of it has made it truth for me.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

At over 800 pages it was too long, but pretty good. I wavered at times in my commitment, and more than several pages were just skimmed. A more judicious pruning by the editor was in order. A gardener’s hand needed, to prune so as to encourage overall healthy growth. Otherwise a book grows lanky and uninteresting.

Yet another in the barrage of Newf-lit. The author refers to it as a “transcompositive narrative”. Ie, a blending of facts and fiction, but so thoroughly mixed it is like a suspension of particles in a slurry of fiction. or something like that.
He used Newfoundland historical events as touchstones in the lives of the characters. He touched on lives of different generations over a couple of hundred years in the families of Blackstrap Hawco. Some were so intriguing, especially the Irish immigrants in the 1800s, but he teased us with their lives and then abandoned them, and so abandoned us. We were introduced, made friends, but there were no callbacks. i kept waiting to return to the woman who gave birth to the twins, and to more of the story of the woman whose bastard baby was spirited away and presumably killed, by the too-powerful local priest. But the last half to third of the book returned to a more traditional narrative form, and by now became a story really just about Blackstrap. The author was fatigued by his experiment. So reluctantly we the reader had to go along with it.

His impressionistic style of writing was surprisingly easy to read once you allow yourself to be carried along in it. The style though leaves one with the sense that these characters are more animal than human; they seem almost incapable of intelligent decision-making. They are fatalistic, and abandon their futures and their presents to the powers -- the church, the employers, the wealthy businessmen. When they rebel it is in the way an animal rebels in a trap: it chews off its leg. Well, sadly, this is likely an accurate representation of not just Newfoundlanders but people all over. Families buffeted by external events, seemingly incapable of controlling or influencing those events. And lacking even the initiative or desire to take charge. Because at least this way they have someone to blame, and its not themselves. Or so they think........

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow!! read town that forgot.....and was blown away by that,so bought this. It takes some reading and I have only just started pt 2 so won't comment further except to say-yes-it can be frustrating and puzzling at times-sometimes i was near tears with the beauty of it,and other times i thought Harvey had to be on something!parts are often written in a completely different style to match each character-v. clever!
there is such a rawness here always tinged with stoicsm and - very occasionally- warmth,even in the most damaged characters.loved thelurching backwards and forwards in time in pt1, unlike another review i have read,it made me even more hungry for this epic tale.have to agree at the moment that pt 2 is lacking the substance of pt 1 though-but pt 1 is a hard act to follow!

[Kim]

I can't say a truly enjoyed this read, although maybe some parts. It took me forever, not one of those books you can just read a few pages of once in a while. And the author's use of his own invention "transcomposite literature" just seemed weird and sensationalistic.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://shelf-monkey.blogspot.com/2008...

[Jon Archer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me over a year to get through this, off and on. Not as easy at all as "The Town That Forgot How to Breathe" or "Inside" but ultimately worthwhile.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Potentially my favorite book

[Lorelei · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved it! amazing heartfelt story of people I never thought I would be the least interested in. I won't ever forget this novel! I will definitely read more by this author.