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Newfoundland Trilogy #3
First Snow, Last Light
From the author of the critically acclaimed, prizewinning and internationally bestselling The Colony of Unrequited Dreams comes an epic family mystery with a powerful, surprise ending, which features the return of the ever-fascinating Sheilagh Fielding, one of the most memorable characters in fiction.
Ned Vatcher, only 14, ambles home from school in the chill hush that precedes the first storm of the winter of 1936 to find the house locked, the family car missing, and his parents gone without a trace. From that point on, his life is driven by the need to find out what happened to the Vanished Vatchers. His father, Edgar, born to a poor family of fishermen, had risen to become the right-hand man to the colony's prime minister, then suffered an unexpected fall from grace. Were he and his wife murdered? Was it suicide? Had they run away? If so, why had they left their only child behind?
Ned soon finds himself enmeshed in another family, that of his missing father and the poverty from which the man somehow escaped. His grandparents, Nan and Reg, his Uncle Cyril and others, are themselves haunted by the inexplicable disappearance of a third Vatcher, a young man who was lost at sea on a calm and sunny day years earlier. Two other people loom large as Ned becomes Newfoundland's first media mogul, building an empire to insulate him from a Jesuit priest named Father Duggan, and Sheilagh Fielding, a boozy giantess who, while wandering the city streets at night, composes satiric columns that scandalize the rich and powerful. In Ned, Fielding sees a surrogate for her two lost children, the secret that dogs her life, while Ned believes the enigmatic Fielding to be his soulmate.
The novel builds to a spectacular resolution of the mystery of all the Vanished Vatchers. Only Wayne Johnston could create such larger-than-life, mythic characters embroiled in events that leave us contemplating not only their tragedies and triumphs, but the forces that compel us all to act in ways that surprise and sometimes terrify us.
Ned Vatcher, only 14, ambles home from school in the chill hush that precedes the first storm of the winter of 1936 to find the house locked, the family car missing, and his parents gone without a trace. From that point on, his life is driven by the need to find out what happened to the Vanished Vatchers. His father, Edgar, born to a poor family of fishermen, had risen to become the right-hand man to the colony's prime minister, then suffered an unexpected fall from grace. Were he and his wife murdered? Was it suicide? Had they run away? If so, why had they left their only child behind?
Ned soon finds himself enmeshed in another family, that of his missing father and the poverty from which the man somehow escaped. His grandparents, Nan and Reg, his Uncle Cyril and others, are themselves haunted by the inexplicable disappearance of a third Vatcher, a young man who was lost at sea on a calm and sunny day years earlier. Two other people loom large as Ned becomes Newfoundland's first media mogul, building an empire to insulate him from a Jesuit priest named Father Duggan, and Sheilagh Fielding, a boozy giantess who, while wandering the city streets at night, composes satiric columns that scandalize the rich and powerful. In Ned, Fielding sees a surrogate for her two lost children, the secret that dogs her life, while Ned believes the enigmatic Fielding to be his soulmate.
The novel builds to a spectacular resolution of the mystery of all the Vanished Vatchers. Only Wayne Johnston could create such larger-than-life, mythic characters embroiled in events that leave us contemplating not only their tragedies and triumphs, but the forces that compel us all to act in ways that surprise and sometimes terrify us.
512 pages, Paperback
First published September 5, 2017
38 people are currently reading
1223 people want to read
About the author
Wayne Johnston
24 books310 followersWayne Johnston was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. After a brief stint in pre-Med, Wayne obtained a BA in English from Memorial University. He worked as a reporter for the St. John's Daily News before deciding to devote himself full-time to writing.
En route to being published, Wayne earned an MA in Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick. Then he got off to a quick start. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, published when he was 27 years old, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel award for the best first novel published in the English language in Canada in that year. The Divine Ryans was adapted to a film, for which Wayne wrote the screenplay. Baltimore's Mansion, a memoire dealing with his grandfather, his father and Wayne himself, won the Charles Taylor Prize. Both The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York were on bestseller lists in Canada and have been published in the US, Britain, Germany, Holland, China and Spain. Colony was identified by the Globe and Mail newspaper as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever produced.
En route to being published, Wayne earned an MA in Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick. Then he got off to a quick start. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, published when he was 27 years old, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel award for the best first novel published in the English language in Canada in that year. The Divine Ryans was adapted to a film, for which Wayne wrote the screenplay. Baltimore's Mansion, a memoire dealing with his grandfather, his father and Wayne himself, won the Charles Taylor Prize. Both The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York were on bestseller lists in Canada and have been published in the US, Britain, Germany, Holland, China and Spain. Colony was identified by the Globe and Mail newspaper as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever produced.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 177 reviews
September 28, 2017
3+ stars. There's so much I like in Wayne Johnston's novels, but First Snow, Last Light didn't quite come together for me. Johnston is a Newfoundland writer, and he writes about that province with so much love and humour and a touch of melancholy. He creates brilliant characters, fearlessly takes on morally fraught topics and writes beautifully. But First Snow, Last Light felt like too big a serving of all that's good about Johnston's writing. Set between the 1930s and 1960s, the story mostly focuses on Ned Vatcher, whose parents vanish when he is in his early teen years. As the book unfolds, Ned obsessively tries to find out what happened to his parents. Along the way, he becomes a generous but difficult and grandiose personality in a Newfoundland that has recently divisively voted to join Canada. This is the third in a trilogy, but it certainly wouldn't be necessary to have read the last two to read this one. It features some recurring characters, one of my favourites being Fielding -- six foot tall woman journalist with a tendency to melancholy and self destruction. As is his talent, Johnston has again created big difficult characters and a dark story, mixed in with Newfoundland's unique history. In this case, at times, it felt like too much -- too many tormented souls struggling with too many strands of complex personal history. But that is Johnston's style. I loved how he pulled it off in The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and was interested in how far he went in The Son of a Certain Woman. Not so much in this one. But I will definitely continue to read his books. He's an unusual talent who writes about one of my favourite places in Canada. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
August 23, 2017
As Nan Finn said of people who went missing in the woods at twilight, they had been led astray, not by fairies but by snow when there should have been no snow, a rogue blizzard when winter was a month away, led astray by the pale, bewitching light of late November, the lulling light of sunset in the fall.
First Snow, Last Light is the third volume in Wayne Johnston's Newfoundland Trilogy, and having now read all three, I get the feeling that this series wasn't pre-planned as such from the beginning; that Johnston simply decided to revisit an old idea (and his most striking character, Sheilagh Fielding) two more times over the years. Because I've read the first two books in this series, it would be hard for me to say if this one stands alone as a compelling read, but taken as a whole, it's a satisfying, if uneven, trilogy. Note: I read an Advanced Reading Copy, so excerpted quotes may not be in their final forms.
The Vanishing Vatchers. I was left with nothing but the setting of their lives, the stage, the props and costumes, the performance that only I had fallen for and which had moved on to somewhere else. That its run was done, everyone but I believed.
First Snow, Last Light begins with a short second-person introduction: “You” arrive home from school to a locked and unaccountably empty house – your recluse mother has always been there to greet you before – and even after you go get your coach, Father Duggan, from school to come and wait with you, your parents never return. The narrative then begins properly, from the point-of-view of Ned Vatcher, the boy whose devoted parents mysteriously vanished one November afternoon in 1936 when he was fourteen. Told in a straight timeline from 1936 to 1961 (with some of Ned's childhood memories woven in at the beginning and moving a bit beyond at the very end), the perspective jumps from Ned to Sheilagh Fielding (and a couple other characters, including whoever intermittently comments on Ned's sections, calling him “you”), and we watch as Ned grows up an orphan; eventually earning a Track & Field scholarship to Boston College and returning to St. John's to become a millionaire by transplanting the American ideas he had learned while away. The nagging mystery of what happened to Edgar and Megan Vatcher was enough to keep me engaged, but the overall plot – the poor boy gets rich and devotes his life to finding his parents at the cost of his own happiness – felt a little thin. And while I had been looking forward to reading about Fielding again, there were fewer scenes of her verbal jousting to enjoy than the last time around, and then everything I have grown to love about the wry dipsomaniacal giantess is upended by this:
I spent the balance of the war setting down an alternative version of my life, which I called The Custodian of Paradise and which I fancy I might someday publish. Such was the measure of my despair that I devised a fictional existence that was far stranger, far more fantastic than my real one.
Whaaaat? The interesting parts of Fielding's history – the self-exile, the Provider and his delegate, the reason behind the fallout between her parents – is all “fictional”? It just makes her dissolute life seem even more pathetic, and I wish Johnston hadn't reduced her so. I appreciate that we get to see how Fielding's life turns out (even if I can't quite believe the number of marriage proposals she receives over the years), but I didn't like how it turns out. And in the end, I didn't much care for how Ned's storyline pans out either. Still, it's pointless to complain about an author not writing the story I wanted to read.
I turned round and rested again, facing west now, up the Bonavista as the section men said, toward the continent of Newfoundland, the intersection of the main line and the branch, the never-glimpsed wilderness from which the question we had failed to answer had been borne to us, the country that would never be discovered or forgotten, the colony of unrequited dreams that would never be acknowledged as a nation except by those of us who made it one.
Here's my overall takeaway: I think that The Colony of Unrequited Dreams was a work of genius; a five star literary interpretation of Newfoundland's history. The Custodian of Paradise was an interesting reworking of the first book, filling in the perspective of Sheilagh Fielding; probably Johnston's most compelling character. The timeline of First Snow, Last Light begins just before the end of the first two volumes, and through the story of the enterprising Ned Vatcher, references how Newfoundland modernised itself – transforming from British colony to Canadian province – but this book doesn't really add much to the understanding of Newfoundland; it lacks the big picture historical events of the first book and the community-level strictures of the second. Other than to tie up Fielding's story – and she felt pretty peripheral to its plot – I don't know what the overall point of this book was. Even so, I was looking forward to reading this book and am glad I did. I recommend it to other completionists.
January 22, 2020
You should pay less attention to surfaces and more to trying to discern what lies beneath them....You think that goodness looks good and that truth looks truthful. They almost never do. p69
What lies beneath the surface of the snow? Underneath the fluffy sparkle of freshly fallen white crystals is frozen dirt and rock, hard and dark. Beneath a genteel exterior, murky feelings swirl. What crystallizes is the frozen heart of obsession, more of an enigma than a mystery.
Grief, unmodified, lies in the guts of the living like a stone, in the mind like a dark unending. p368
Yet WJ has an infectious eagerness that infuses his storytelling with grace; sympathetic to all of his characters, his solid choice of words and his relaxed pace make for a gentle kind of tension that builds with each surprising twist. Slowly too does he engage the reader in disappointment. Mercifully, he includes two characters who can hold the ardent readers esteem: the scandalous journalist and the renegade priest are complex characters that buffer the story and provide a bit of relief from the claustrophobic atmosphere of fixation.
As my rapport with the father and son faded, my impression of the theme shifted as well. This is not 'the triumph of resilience over a bleak environment and tragic circumstance' but more 'the triumph of bleak circumstances'. Not much comfort here, but an inkling of what strength is required to live under such challenging conditions.
This is actually the third volume of a trilogy and although it certainly affirmed my intention to read the first two volumes, it can be read on its own. I started it as the first snows were falling outside my window and finished it as a great blizzard resulted in a state of emergency in St. Johns.
The resonance was chilling.
4/5 in GR system, 5/7 in mine
November 15, 2017
I read First Snow, Last Light first, and perhaps should have read The Custodian of Paradise before it, (I do own that one too) but, I don't think my not reading it suffered the story in First Snow, Last Light. It would definitely have provided more of the past/ background story for Shelaigh Fielding since she was a major character in First Snow and is the focus in Custodian.
Both Ned and Fielding are chasing and haunted by ghosts in this story. Ned is left alone at 14 when his parents vanish without a trace. Fr. Duggan and Fielding become the major influences in Ned's life. Fielding is unravelling from the loss of her children, twins she gave up at birth.
Ned's life is consumed with trying to find out what happened to his parents - the Vanishing Vatchers and invests all his money, energy, everything into this mystery. By the end the mystery is admitted to Ned and reveals the layers of tragedy and betrayal in the Vatcher family.
I did feel it a touch too long and drawn out but as the ending comes together this turns into a fine piece of storytelling. I will go back now and read The Custodian of Paradise. I suspect it will be a good reading experience and may just enhance First Snow, Last Light that much more for me - kind of in the way of what happened when I read Itani's Tell before reading Deafening. There were quite a few pieces that fell nicely into place for me by reading them in reverse order, so I suspect this could very well be the same when I read The Custodian of Paradise with it's focus on Fielding.
** Edited to add: I read The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (and even The Navigator of New York ) YEARS ago too. Colony is the first in this trilogy but the lengthy distance in years reading it to First Snow doesn't impact it negatively or anything.
Both Ned and Fielding are chasing and haunted by ghosts in this story. Ned is left alone at 14 when his parents vanish without a trace. Fr. Duggan and Fielding become the major influences in Ned's life. Fielding is unravelling from the loss of her children, twins she gave up at birth.
Ned's life is consumed with trying to find out what happened to his parents - the Vanishing Vatchers and invests all his money, energy, everything into this mystery. By the end the mystery is admitted to Ned and reveals the layers of tragedy and betrayal in the Vatcher family.
I did feel it a touch too long and drawn out but as the ending comes together this turns into a fine piece of storytelling. I will go back now and read The Custodian of Paradise. I suspect it will be a good reading experience and may just enhance First Snow, Last Light that much more for me - kind of in the way of what happened when I read Itani's Tell before reading Deafening. There were quite a few pieces that fell nicely into place for me by reading them in reverse order, so I suspect this could very well be the same when I read The Custodian of Paradise with it's focus on Fielding.
** Edited to add: I read The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (and even The Navigator of New York ) YEARS ago too. Colony is the first in this trilogy but the lengthy distance in years reading it to First Snow doesn't impact it negatively or anything.
August 22, 2017
We begin with a 14 year old boy, Ned Vatcher, who comes home from school to discover his parents are gone. They've disappeared without a word on the day of the first snow storm of the winter, in St. John's, Newfoundland, November 1936, leaving him behind. Ned has come home from school to an empty house and a mystery. He runs to his sports coach from school, Father Duggan and ends up with his father's family, a family of fishermen who have already lost one son to the sea. He grows up to make a life for himself in media and other businesses but his parents' disappearance continues to haunt him. What happened to them? Why did they leave him behind?
A couple of years ago, Wayne Johnston wrote a fictional account of the life of Joey Smallwood, the first premier of Newfoundland called The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. It featured a female journalist, the enigmatic, alcoholic and reclusive Sheilagh Fielding. First Snow, Last Light is told from Ned's point of view and also from the point of view of Fielding, which is great because she was such a strange and engaging character in that first book. Johnston also wrote The Custodian of Paradise which is mainly about her though I haven't read that (yet).
Ned's parents' disappearance colours his life as he grows up and becomes a wealthy businessman in Newfoundland. Sheilagh Fielding had made friends with his father and reconnects with Ned, his adopted son, Brendan, and Father Duggan. The novel follows their lives while we wait to see if the mystery of Ned's parents ever gets resolved. There are twists and secrets, and the ghosts of the past haunt them all.
Wayne Johnston is a very talented writer and his characters are complex with many layers. Ned is not particularly likeable, nor was Smallwood in Colony of Unrequited Dreams but Fielding is again the best character in the book. I wonder if the trilogy of books isn't really her story, rather than those of Ned Vatcher and Joey Smallwood. I really enjoy his books and they haven't let me down yet.
This was a Netgalley book for review. It is released in September 2017.
A couple of years ago, Wayne Johnston wrote a fictional account of the life of Joey Smallwood, the first premier of Newfoundland called The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. It featured a female journalist, the enigmatic, alcoholic and reclusive Sheilagh Fielding. First Snow, Last Light is told from Ned's point of view and also from the point of view of Fielding, which is great because she was such a strange and engaging character in that first book. Johnston also wrote The Custodian of Paradise which is mainly about her though I haven't read that (yet).
Ned's parents' disappearance colours his life as he grows up and becomes a wealthy businessman in Newfoundland. Sheilagh Fielding had made friends with his father and reconnects with Ned, his adopted son, Brendan, and Father Duggan. The novel follows their lives while we wait to see if the mystery of Ned's parents ever gets resolved. There are twists and secrets, and the ghosts of the past haunt them all.
Wayne Johnston is a very talented writer and his characters are complex with many layers. Ned is not particularly likeable, nor was Smallwood in Colony of Unrequited Dreams but Fielding is again the best character in the book. I wonder if the trilogy of books isn't really her story, rather than those of Ned Vatcher and Joey Smallwood. I really enjoy his books and they haven't let me down yet.
This was a Netgalley book for review. It is released in September 2017.
February 22, 2020
Epic third novel of The Newfoundland Trilogy featuring the enigmatic Sheilagh Fielding. Reading First Snow, Last Light is not dependent on reading the first two as the settings are separated by years. Johnston grew up in Newfoundland and is a world-class writer, assuredly headed to be featured in the canon of Canadian Literature. I think one reads Johnston for the language--his writing is brilliant, humourous, witty, and descriptive. His characters are all of this and more and we really get inside the characters' personalities.
In First Snow, Last Light, we have Ned Vatcher, whose parents mysteriously disappeared when he was 14, and who reinvents himself into a man obsessed with, or possessed by, becoming rich and finding out what happened to his parents, the Vanished Vatchers. Fielding also plays a prominent role as she was friends with Ned's dad, then Ned, and the priest who becomes the father figure in Ned's life.
I suggest only reading this book, or any of Johnston's reads, if you have time to really sit and READ the words, really read them and get swept into Johnston's writing :)
In First Snow, Last Light, we have Ned Vatcher, whose parents mysteriously disappeared when he was 14, and who reinvents himself into a man obsessed with, or possessed by, becoming rich and finding out what happened to his parents, the Vanished Vatchers. Fielding also plays a prominent role as she was friends with Ned's dad, then Ned, and the priest who becomes the father figure in Ned's life.
I suggest only reading this book, or any of Johnston's reads, if you have time to really sit and READ the words, really read them and get swept into Johnston's writing :)
October 7, 2021
The best of the trilogy! Excellent writing, plot-lines and many a twist and turn as well, character developments of the newer Vatcher family members and really liked how the lives of Ned and Fielding ended.
June 5, 2022
When Ned is 14-years old, he comes home from school to find no one home. This is unusual. It turns out both his parents have disappeared. The book follows Ned as an adult and looks back on his life without his parents in it. Sheilagh Fielding, a reporter and friend of Ned’s father, becomes a good friend to Ned. In 1949, when Newfoundland becomes a part of Canada, the last child born before that time is referred to as “The Last Newfoundlander”. Ned ends up adopting the orphan and also takes in the boy’s destitute aunt.
The book alternates between Sheilagh’s point of view and Ned’s (with a couple of chapters devoted to two other characters). I really have no interest in Sheilagh. She bores me and I don’t like her. Unfortunately, Ned’s missing-parents mystery really wasn’t touched on for most of the book, but we did come back to it at the end. That, of course for me, was the most interesting part of the book. So because of that, I found the start and end much more interesting than the rest of the book. Overall, I’m rating it ok, but it definitely picked up at the end, not only when Ned finally found out what happened, but what happened after that.
I listened to the audio, which had four different narrators. It was done well, although I still lost focus occasionally, but I don’t believe that was due to it being an audio book.
The book alternates between Sheilagh’s point of view and Ned’s (with a couple of chapters devoted to two other characters). I really have no interest in Sheilagh. She bores me and I don’t like her. Unfortunately, Ned’s missing-parents mystery really wasn’t touched on for most of the book, but we did come back to it at the end. That, of course for me, was the most interesting part of the book. So because of that, I found the start and end much more interesting than the rest of the book. Overall, I’m rating it ok, but it definitely picked up at the end, not only when Ned finally found out what happened, but what happened after that.
I listened to the audio, which had four different narrators. It was done well, although I still lost focus occasionally, but I don’t believe that was due to it being an audio book.
April 25, 2018
WARNING: Minor spoilers are afoot.
In his saga of page-turners known as the Newfoundland Trilogy, Wayne Johnston has given his readers a truly gripping protagonist in the character of Sheilagh Fielding. A columnist with an emotionally tense past, readers instantly fall under her spell in The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, prompting them to continue reading her life story in The Custodian of Paradise. Ultimately, everyone who picks up one of Johnston’s novels will love Fielding for her honesty – which can, at times, be brutal – and her unconventional femininity which proves, without a shred of doubt, that a woman can be tough as nails and a little ruffled by the world while still being remarkably beautiful, inside and out. Furthermore, her biting wit and intelligence will make readers adore her unconditionally, page after page.
Now, in the trilogy’s conclusion, First Snow, Last Light, readers follow Fielding on the tumultuous journey that is her relationship with the Vatcher family, who are a complicated troupe. Edgar Vatcher is a Rhodes Scholar and an Oxford man, serving under the corrupt politician, Sir Richard Squire, during the 1930s, and alongside him are his wife, Megan - a passionate Londoner whom he weds after an accidental pregnancy and whom never gets over her homesickness after moving to Newfoundland - and their young son, Ned, who serves as one of the novel’s dual protagonists.
Readers quickly learn that Edgar and Megan Vatcher vanish without a trace on a stormy November day in 1936, leaving Ned with no parents and, even worse, no idea whatsoever where they went nor what happened to them. When the suggestion is made that they could one-day return, his grandmother’s response is that “you never know” (pp. 132) – and never knowing often coincides with never moving on. Ned’s only solace comes in the form of Father Duggan, his track and field coach, and Sheilagh Fielding, who was a close friend of the family before the Vatchers’ disappearance – or, at the very least, was a close friend of Edgar and Ned Vatcher.
After the Vatchers’ vanishing act, readers then follow Ned as he grows up without them and Fielding as she watches him mature. Therein lies one of the most interesting aspects of First Snow, Last Light; while it is, at its core, a mystery (and Edgar and Megan’s disappearance remains the driving force of the text), solving the case of the Vanishing Vatchers is not all that the novel is about. It is not Sherlockian in its formula, but rather Dickensian; Ned Vatcher becomes, in a sense, an orphan vagabond similar to Oliver Twist. His parents’ uncertain and untimely demise always lingers in the back of his mind, but it does not stop him from living an adventurous life. He goes to college in Boston, bartends in New York City, and encounters an array of vibrant characters along the way - some good and some bad - before returning to St. John’s. Subsequently, the story strikes one as more of a bildungsroman for Ned than a who-done-it about his mother and father’s disappearance.
It is through the character of Ned Vatcher that Johnston has solidified a figure in the novel who is just as unforgettable and iconic as the fiery Sheilagh Fielding is throughout the entire trilogy. Whereas the latter will always be remembered by readers as the quirky columnist who fearlessly knocks bowler hats off of sheriffs and writes stunning articles that you never want to be on the wrong side of, Ned Vatcher will be remembered as Newfoundland’s very own fictionalized Wolf of Wall Street who brings the hustle and bustle of New York life to St. John’s with his tabloid newspaper and countless other business ventures. As he grows older, his attitude has the capability to make him downright dislikable as a result, what with his “reputation for eccentricity” (pp. 206) and his greed, emphasized through how his “money seems to multiply itself” (pp. 177). Yet, it is hard to dislike a millionaire who adopts an orphaned child and is still, decades later, determined to uncover the truth about what happened to his own beloved parents. Ned is as endearing as he is problematic, but isn’t everybody?
Just as Ned spends the text constantly trying to figure out what happened to Edgar and Megan, even while he’s busy accumulating a fortune, so too will readers of the novel. Within the bildungsroman that is First Snow, Last Light, Johnston has planted subtle clues and motive regarding the Vanished Vatchers that can easily be missed the first time around if one is too wrapped up in other elements of Ned and Fielding’s story. Perhaps that is the whole point; the subtlety of the clues leads to the resolution of the mystery being just as surprising to ensnared readers as it is for Ned.
However, if readers prefer for the mysteries that they consume to be wrapped up with a neat little bow, wherein the detective smokes his pipe and deftly unravels exactly what happened and how he knows that his conclusions are accurate, First Snow, Last Light might just leave them aghast, for it does not at all feature your traditional mystery novel conclusion. While we do learn, via confessions, what happened to Edgar and Megan Vatcher in November of 1936, Ned – and, subsequently, the readers themselves – are left without closure regarding the incident as there is a troubling lack of proof. There are never any bodies discovered to mourn over. There is only a version of the truth that is spoken, but never shown.
For that reason, while Johnston’s mystery novel may not be conventional, it is extremely true to reality. Most of the time, mysteries – particularly those involving disappearances – go unsolved and, if evidence does turn up, it often turns up too late for anything to be done or for the loved ones of the disappeared to be consoled. First Snow, Last Light is thus an eloquent study in grief and how, even when questions are finally answered, closure can still be lacking.
In his saga of page-turners known as the Newfoundland Trilogy, Wayne Johnston has given his readers a truly gripping protagonist in the character of Sheilagh Fielding. A columnist with an emotionally tense past, readers instantly fall under her spell in The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, prompting them to continue reading her life story in The Custodian of Paradise. Ultimately, everyone who picks up one of Johnston’s novels will love Fielding for her honesty – which can, at times, be brutal – and her unconventional femininity which proves, without a shred of doubt, that a woman can be tough as nails and a little ruffled by the world while still being remarkably beautiful, inside and out. Furthermore, her biting wit and intelligence will make readers adore her unconditionally, page after page.
Now, in the trilogy’s conclusion, First Snow, Last Light, readers follow Fielding on the tumultuous journey that is her relationship with the Vatcher family, who are a complicated troupe. Edgar Vatcher is a Rhodes Scholar and an Oxford man, serving under the corrupt politician, Sir Richard Squire, during the 1930s, and alongside him are his wife, Megan - a passionate Londoner whom he weds after an accidental pregnancy and whom never gets over her homesickness after moving to Newfoundland - and their young son, Ned, who serves as one of the novel’s dual protagonists.
Readers quickly learn that Edgar and Megan Vatcher vanish without a trace on a stormy November day in 1936, leaving Ned with no parents and, even worse, no idea whatsoever where they went nor what happened to them. When the suggestion is made that they could one-day return, his grandmother’s response is that “you never know” (pp. 132) – and never knowing often coincides with never moving on. Ned’s only solace comes in the form of Father Duggan, his track and field coach, and Sheilagh Fielding, who was a close friend of the family before the Vatchers’ disappearance – or, at the very least, was a close friend of Edgar and Ned Vatcher.
After the Vatchers’ vanishing act, readers then follow Ned as he grows up without them and Fielding as she watches him mature. Therein lies one of the most interesting aspects of First Snow, Last Light; while it is, at its core, a mystery (and Edgar and Megan’s disappearance remains the driving force of the text), solving the case of the Vanishing Vatchers is not all that the novel is about. It is not Sherlockian in its formula, but rather Dickensian; Ned Vatcher becomes, in a sense, an orphan vagabond similar to Oliver Twist. His parents’ uncertain and untimely demise always lingers in the back of his mind, but it does not stop him from living an adventurous life. He goes to college in Boston, bartends in New York City, and encounters an array of vibrant characters along the way - some good and some bad - before returning to St. John’s. Subsequently, the story strikes one as more of a bildungsroman for Ned than a who-done-it about his mother and father’s disappearance.
It is through the character of Ned Vatcher that Johnston has solidified a figure in the novel who is just as unforgettable and iconic as the fiery Sheilagh Fielding is throughout the entire trilogy. Whereas the latter will always be remembered by readers as the quirky columnist who fearlessly knocks bowler hats off of sheriffs and writes stunning articles that you never want to be on the wrong side of, Ned Vatcher will be remembered as Newfoundland’s very own fictionalized Wolf of Wall Street who brings the hustle and bustle of New York life to St. John’s with his tabloid newspaper and countless other business ventures. As he grows older, his attitude has the capability to make him downright dislikable as a result, what with his “reputation for eccentricity” (pp. 206) and his greed, emphasized through how his “money seems to multiply itself” (pp. 177). Yet, it is hard to dislike a millionaire who adopts an orphaned child and is still, decades later, determined to uncover the truth about what happened to his own beloved parents. Ned is as endearing as he is problematic, but isn’t everybody?
Just as Ned spends the text constantly trying to figure out what happened to Edgar and Megan, even while he’s busy accumulating a fortune, so too will readers of the novel. Within the bildungsroman that is First Snow, Last Light, Johnston has planted subtle clues and motive regarding the Vanished Vatchers that can easily be missed the first time around if one is too wrapped up in other elements of Ned and Fielding’s story. Perhaps that is the whole point; the subtlety of the clues leads to the resolution of the mystery being just as surprising to ensnared readers as it is for Ned.
However, if readers prefer for the mysteries that they consume to be wrapped up with a neat little bow, wherein the detective smokes his pipe and deftly unravels exactly what happened and how he knows that his conclusions are accurate, First Snow, Last Light might just leave them aghast, for it does not at all feature your traditional mystery novel conclusion. While we do learn, via confessions, what happened to Edgar and Megan Vatcher in November of 1936, Ned – and, subsequently, the readers themselves – are left without closure regarding the incident as there is a troubling lack of proof. There are never any bodies discovered to mourn over. There is only a version of the truth that is spoken, but never shown.
For that reason, while Johnston’s mystery novel may not be conventional, it is extremely true to reality. Most of the time, mysteries – particularly those involving disappearances – go unsolved and, if evidence does turn up, it often turns up too late for anything to be done or for the loved ones of the disappeared to be consoled. First Snow, Last Light is thus an eloquent study in grief and how, even when questions are finally answered, closure can still be lacking.
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April 17, 2018It didn’t work for me. First Snow, Last Light, opens in the second-person, present-tense voice. Lost me there. Shifts into multiple first-person voices. Marginally better. Fielding appears first in her column. Some magnificent descriptive passages of the Newfoundland landscape. Otherwise, basically treading water. I like Fielding, and I find the narrative is livelier when she is near the centre of it. And there is some satisfaction in the ‘comeuppance’ department for at least one figure who has been on the edge of the story since The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. As ever, Confederation plays a role in the plot. I thought it an improvement on Son of a Certain Woman, but remain generally dissatisfied. [from not a lot later] Sometimes I get obsessed with why I have any kind of reaction to any book. This one bothered me so much that I re-read it in pretty much a single sitting. It’s a different book and a more interesting book (not necessarily better) when read with the mysteries all explained. Makes me wonder if The Divine Ryans is my favourite mostly because, in the process of using it in about a dozen courses, I’ve read it so often. Perhaps, ideally, every book should only ever be reviewed by someone who has read it three or four times. But, reality.
November 9, 2018
I had some very mixed feelings about this book. I didn't realize it was the last of a trilogy so maybe reading all three books would have made a difference to me in understanding and liking the story. Full disclosure-- I am not a Newfoundlander but I am from Down East, as they so quaintly put it in Ontario where I now live, so I get it, I really do. The Maritime provinces are, in many ways, the colonies of unrequited dreams, and they reverberate in our hearts and minds in the same way as the American Deep South does in the psyche of many Southerners. That is to say, we love them and we hate them, we can't live there and they haunt us still. Having said that, I found the novel to be at times a moving story of loss and at other times, a pain in the neck to absorb.
Loss of souls and loss of your country: I had forgotten before I read this book just how betrayed Newfoundlanders felt by the entry into Confederation, a loss which cuts deeply as it happened less than seventy years ago. And unlike Quebec, they were betrayed by their own people. more or less. So to paraphrase Faulkner, the past isnt over there, it isnt even past.
HOWEVER. I still found the story to be a bit much for me. I felt the great loss Ned had for his parents and I felt sorry for the terrible spiritual and physical poverty of the entire Vascher clan but my God I could hardly stand them. Even Shelagh Fielding who was supposed to be a sympathetic character drove me crazy with her drinking and complete refusal to do anything except atone for her past. I liked Duggan who was stoic throughout. I just found so many of the characters to be so unlikeable and in the worst of their excesses so Irish (and yes, I am partly Irish so I think I can say this), I almost gave up on them..Also the story just seemed to go on and on and the ending didn't satisfy me. I didn't believe it. Especially Reg. Though they do say the definition of eternity is the time it takes an Irish person to get over a grudge, so maybe it is plausible. The families I knew back home were often troubled but not as hateful as these people were to each other. Maybe I am wrong but it just seemed too overdone to me.
Loss of souls and loss of your country: I had forgotten before I read this book just how betrayed Newfoundlanders felt by the entry into Confederation, a loss which cuts deeply as it happened less than seventy years ago. And unlike Quebec, they were betrayed by their own people. more or less. So to paraphrase Faulkner, the past isnt over there, it isnt even past.
HOWEVER. I still found the story to be a bit much for me. I felt the great loss Ned had for his parents and I felt sorry for the terrible spiritual and physical poverty of the entire Vascher clan but my God I could hardly stand them. Even Shelagh Fielding who was supposed to be a sympathetic character drove me crazy with her drinking and complete refusal to do anything except atone for her past. I liked Duggan who was stoic throughout. I just found so many of the characters to be so unlikeable and in the worst of their excesses so Irish (and yes, I am partly Irish so I think I can say this), I almost gave up on them..Also the story just seemed to go on and on and the ending didn't satisfy me. I didn't believe it. Especially Reg. Though they do say the definition of eternity is the time it takes an Irish person to get over a grudge, so maybe it is plausible. The families I knew back home were often troubled but not as hateful as these people were to each other. Maybe I am wrong but it just seemed too overdone to me.
July 3, 2021
Yup. Wayne Johnston, predictably very good. Agh, those long suffering Newfies. Twenty five years of a painful quest to find answers, grudges, secrets and resentments. But at the same time kindness, loyalties and generosity. Great multidimensional characters, with their complicated motivations. I feel like everyone knows at least one immigrant who is always dissatisfied with their new life, even long after it isn’t new any more. A nagging perpetually bitter wife who is a miserable but yet devoted caregiver who can’t stop harping about a terrible tragedy, like a never healing scab she can’t help but pick at. The martyr. The man obsessed with finding answers to a decades long mystery, long after reason and practicality make it pointless. And the inveterate writer who is harbouring her own complicated resentments. All these people and their relationships. With the backdrop of the severe and unrelenting winter the rock offers.
July 9, 2018
This is not the best of Wayne Johnston books, but it has the allure of Newfoundland and compelling characters to keep you reading.
Dark, almost gothic in tone, it tells the story of of one family in all its glory and madness.
It is a tragedy in most ways, softened by family love and carved out of family hate.
Engrossing, but as cold and hard in many ways as its province.
Feilding is the most memorable character, Duggan the least. Ned the pivot around which the plot revolves. It is a mystery of sorts,but ultimately too complicated and melodramatic.
The reader does however enter a world that demands to be seen.
I alternatively saw it as a book that should be read with a good Irish whiskey, or one that warns one against touching a drop. But that is how many would describe St. Johns even today.
Dark, almost gothic in tone, it tells the story of of one family in all its glory and madness.
It is a tragedy in most ways, softened by family love and carved out of family hate.
Engrossing, but as cold and hard in many ways as its province.
Feilding is the most memorable character, Duggan the least. Ned the pivot around which the plot revolves. It is a mystery of sorts,but ultimately too complicated and melodramatic.
The reader does however enter a world that demands to be seen.
I alternatively saw it as a book that should be read with a good Irish whiskey, or one that warns one against touching a drop. But that is how many would describe St. Johns even today.
October 24, 2020
This has such a great title and cover and I loved the premise of the book; a boy comes home to an empty house and no one can find his parents. For years. The boy grows up, becomes successful and continues to look and unravel the mystery. Great plot, but somehow in the nearly 500 pages I grew weary and felt the book should not have gone on quite so long. I was more captivated by a secondary character, Sheliegh Fielding (who apparently is in another of the author’s books), than the main character. The mystery is solved, but by the end I was glad to move on to another book.
September 22, 2017
I am giving this book a 4 star even though I think that Johnston over-wrote it. There was a period in the middle when I thought I was going to bail but I am glad I kept at it. Good character development allowed me to empathize with many of the characters.
I love how he describes the landscape of Newfoundland! In the same manner as Colony of Unrequited Dream, he captures the wild, rugged, almost unforgiving beauty and power of the landscape. In much the same way, he depicts the hardiness and strength of the Newfoundland people.
The narration alternates between Ned Vatcher to Sheilagh Fielding who we met first in Colony. This dual perspective approach brings a depth to the story that helps the reader connect with all of the characters.
A long but worthwhile read!
I love how he describes the landscape of Newfoundland! In the same manner as Colony of Unrequited Dream, he captures the wild, rugged, almost unforgiving beauty and power of the landscape. In much the same way, he depicts the hardiness and strength of the Newfoundland people.
The narration alternates between Ned Vatcher to Sheilagh Fielding who we met first in Colony. This dual perspective approach brings a depth to the story that helps the reader connect with all of the characters.
A long but worthwhile read!
October 17, 2017
A real page turner from page one! A mystery that illuminates the history of Newfoundland.
July 15, 2019
I gave up on it. I read a bit, put it down and read another novel. Picked it up and tried again for another few evenings and then put it down for good. I've enjoyed many of Johnston's books but not this one -- partially because it seemed too familiar but without the draw of his other books. The tension between Fielding and Prowse and the stories about the high school drama just seemed tired. I would rather re-read a The Colony of Unrequited Dreams or many of his earlier books than continue with this.
May 20, 2021
Wonderful writing, but a weaker story than his past novels. I loved the earlier books, but this one could have been written in half the pages.
September 19, 2017
5 stars
Read
September 20, 2017Great story. A mystery unfolding so could not wait for the end in a good way. Was great to catch up with characters from previous WJ novels.
February 7, 2021
Final book in the trilogy. In one word, captivating. Revisiting characters and touching upon events from the first 2 novels. Johnson has created a perfect whirlwind of final conclusions for a group of characters I’ve become quite fond of. 4🌟’s.
December 21, 2021
Set in St. John's Newfoundland with an amazing cast of characters, focusing mostly on one
family, the storyline carried me through with great dialogue, contrasting emotions of honesty and deception.
I liked how Johnston told the story from the perspective of the main characters in it.
It had me wondering if the solution to the mystery introduced at the beginning would ever be solved as I savored the exquisite narrative on every page.
family, the storyline carried me through with great dialogue, contrasting emotions of honesty and deception.
I liked how Johnston told the story from the perspective of the main characters in it.
It had me wondering if the solution to the mystery introduced at the beginning would ever be solved as I savored the exquisite narrative on every page.
November 11, 2022
3.75 / 4 rounded up.
November 28, 2017
The strange, almost hillbilly-esque Vatcher family dominates this, the third of Johnston's interconnected volumes set in St. John's, Newfoundland. At age 9 Ned Vatcher arrives home to find his house cold and empty, his parents mysteriously gone. A Jesuit priest named Duggan steps in to stay with Ned for a few weeks while there's still hope that his parents will return. Sheilagh Fielding, last seen in The Custodian of Paradise, is there too. She was friends with Ned's parents, with his father at least. Ned ends up living with his bizarre grandparents - grandmother Nan Finn is the living definition of a shrew, while dumbstruck grandfather Reg scribbles confessions for the local priest and lies almost comatose; the apparent reason for this being the death of his best-loved son, swept away and drowned by a rogue wave while fishing in peaceful waters. Fortunately, Father Duggan is able to help Ned escape to college in Boston, and in time Ned becomes a wealthy businessman, constantly obsessed by and devoted to discovering his parent's fate. Meanwhile, we learn more about the strange life and loves of Sheilagh Fielding. A good read!
January 7, 2018
It seems ages ago that I read Colony of Unrequited Dreams, the story of Joey Smallwood and Newfoundland's unique political history. Sheilagh Fielding was the savvy journalist who called out the misogynists and cronyism and and corrupt decision-making. In First Snow, Last Light, Sheilagh's back. With scraggly long grey hair and an alcohol addiction, she isolates herself by living in a room at a run down hotel, among the ragged people. She develops a strange relationship with Ned Vatcher, the central character in this St Johns mystery, as he becomes obsessed with finding his disappeared parents. His dad loved Sheilagh, too, even though she was a dangerous adversary. Not your typical Newfoundland story, but engaging to the end.
January 10, 2018
I had high expectations for this book, and I was disappointed. Had it not been for a strong ending, I would have trashed this book. Had it not been for The Syndicate Book Club, I wouldn't have finished the book and would have missed the strong ending.
There wasn't one character that really drew me in except perhaps for Sheilagh. They were all flawed and unlikeable. Generally, that doesn't bother me and is not a deal breaker for my enjoyment of a book.
I had thought that the story would be more of a mystery than it was. Instead, it was more an examination of family dynamics marred by tragedy, fettered by alcoholism and destroyed by blame.
There wasn't one character that really drew me in except perhaps for Sheilagh. They were all flawed and unlikeable. Generally, that doesn't bother me and is not a deal breaker for my enjoyment of a book.
I had thought that the story would be more of a mystery than it was. Instead, it was more an examination of family dynamics marred by tragedy, fettered by alcoholism and destroyed by blame.
January 29, 2020
Wayne Johnston novels are an incredibly wonderful way to spend time. He's such a tremendous writer! In every Johnston book I read I find myself getting totally immersed because he definitely has the Newfoundlander's gift for storytelling. He could read the contents of a phone book aloud and I'd find it fascinating! He just has an amazing talent for telling a yarn. I've read several of his books and each and every one of them has earned 5-stars. And the way he links his books using recurring characters - well, it's just crazy, crazy good!! I'd be hard pressed to name a better male author than Wayne Johnson. He's a true Canadian gem!
October 28, 2017
A brilliant story,familiar characters that resonate with the heart and mind.I was drawn into the lives of every single character that was written about in the pages of this book. I was stunned by many revelations and the ultimate twist in this tale of families, secrets and lies told for what those who told them believed was a good reason. I wept for the ones who were left behind to pick up the pieces. Wayne Johnston is a brilliant writer whose work is beautifully crafted and touches a cord in the fragile part of the human psyche. A heartfelt thank you to the author and the publisher.
March 16, 2018
This one just didn’t do it for me. I think I enjoyed The Colony of Unrequited Dreams because it was fiction rooted with an actual historical figure and real historical events. While I was delighted to take up again with the wonderful Sheilagh Fielding, I felt that Ned, the main viewpoint character, was rather unapproachable. The entire novel revolves around solving the mystery of the disappearance of Ned’s parents. It just took too long to get there, and the resolution was too convoluted and unlikely to sustain my interest. Happy to be done.
September 5, 2017
Fourteen-year-old Ned Vatcher returns home from school one day in 1936 to discover that his parents, Edgar and Megan, have disappeared. Though he has to live with his paternal grandparents, Nan Finn and Reg, it is Father Duggan, a Jesuit priest, and Sheilagh Fielding, a friend of his parents, who become his most stalwart supporters. Cyril, Edgar’s brother, also remains an important character in Ned’s life, though not always in a positive way. Various points of view are provided, but the focus is on Ned and Sheilagh.
Ned’s entire life is driven by his parents’ disappearance. He realizes that “to find out what had become of them would be the main goal of my life.” He also decides that unlike his parents who were destitute and debt-ridden before their disappearance, “I would never want for money if I could help it, no matter what I had to do to get it.” Unfortunately, he ends up losing himself. He becomes “deaf to the tones of my own life” and feels “There simply was nothing at the innermost of me.”
Characterization is a strong element in the novel. Ned is a dynamic character who changes as the years pass. As mentioned, he is shaped by the mysterious disappearance of his mother and father; he spends his life “lamenting the loss of things [he] never had” and loses himself; at one point, he is pointedly told, “’I know who and what I am, Ned Vatcher. Not everyone can say the same.’”
Besides Ned, there are other characters who are fully developed. Nan Finn and Sheilagh Fielding are among the most memorable. Both are sharp-tongued, targeting those who displease them. Nan Finn, for example, had no sympathy for Megan who was very unhappy in Newfoundland and yearned to return to London: “’I can tell by those eyes of hers. It’s a wonder dinner gets cooked what with her being so busy bawling and wishing she was there instead of here. . . . What do people do in London? . . . Sit around and talk to each other with their eyes closed. I better keep busy or I’ll get bored and long for London.’” Sheilagh’s targets are the rich and powerful; she writes a regular newspaper column in which she exposes their foibles and hypocrisies.
Sheilagh appears in the previous two novels of the Newfoundland Trilogy: The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Custodian of Paradise. Both titles are actually mentioned by Sheilagh. It is not necessary to read these books first, but they do provide background to events which are mentioned in this third book. This book brings Sheilagh’s story to a close. It has been a while since I read the first two novels in the series and I think I may go back to them.
Abandonment and disappearance are central motifs in the novel. Edgar and Megan disappear and leave Ned feeling abandoned. Sheilagh disappeared from the lives of her children and ends up feeling abandoned herself. Prowse abandoned Sheilagh and his children and in the end “There was no sign in [his eyes] of anything.” Phonse, Ned’s uncle, vanished at sea on a calm day and was never found; Nan Finn, in particular, tries to understand what happened to him. Ned adopts a child but makes a fateful decision which he comes to regard as his worst mistake, “his sin against his son, which was all too similar to the one that Edgar and Megan committed against him – abandonment to the hands of strangers.”
Even Newfoundland is abandoned when there is a vote to join Canada; Sheilagh muses about “the colony of unrequited dreams that would never be acknowledged as a nation except by those of us who made it one.” Appropriately, the books about Newfoundland that are collected by both Edgar and Ned are lost or damaged. And it is surely significant that The Last Newfoundlander loses his voice because of a botched operation.
As a former English teacher, I loved the many literary allusions. Sheilagh has a room in a brothel; she paraphrases T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “I grow old, I grow old. In the rooms the women come and go, talking of Mike and Al and Joe.” Ned alludes to Joseph Conrad’s novel when he speaks of being “in quest of the heart of no one’s darkness but my own.” Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar makes an appearance (“’I come to query Cyril, not to please him’”) as does The Tempest (“’We are all such stuff as murder is made of’”).
One theme is that “you can taint your whole life by doing one thing wrong” so “even a good man might be the engine of a tragedy.” This theme is mentioned both at the beginning and the end and developed through the lives of several characters.
Though the book is more than a mystery, interest is certainly maintained throughout as to what happened to the Vanishing Vatchers. Just like Ned, the reader will find him/herself trying to learn what happened to Edgar and Megan and why no trace of them was found. There are sufficient clues given so an astute reader may guess the solution.
I have enjoyed Wayne Johnston’s previous novels and this one is no exception. It is great literary fiction with memorable characters, carefully developed themes, and a strong sense of place.
Note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
Ned’s entire life is driven by his parents’ disappearance. He realizes that “to find out what had become of them would be the main goal of my life.” He also decides that unlike his parents who were destitute and debt-ridden before their disappearance, “I would never want for money if I could help it, no matter what I had to do to get it.” Unfortunately, he ends up losing himself. He becomes “deaf to the tones of my own life” and feels “There simply was nothing at the innermost of me.”
Characterization is a strong element in the novel. Ned is a dynamic character who changes as the years pass. As mentioned, he is shaped by the mysterious disappearance of his mother and father; he spends his life “lamenting the loss of things [he] never had” and loses himself; at one point, he is pointedly told, “’I know who and what I am, Ned Vatcher. Not everyone can say the same.’”
Besides Ned, there are other characters who are fully developed. Nan Finn and Sheilagh Fielding are among the most memorable. Both are sharp-tongued, targeting those who displease them. Nan Finn, for example, had no sympathy for Megan who was very unhappy in Newfoundland and yearned to return to London: “’I can tell by those eyes of hers. It’s a wonder dinner gets cooked what with her being so busy bawling and wishing she was there instead of here. . . . What do people do in London? . . . Sit around and talk to each other with their eyes closed. I better keep busy or I’ll get bored and long for London.’” Sheilagh’s targets are the rich and powerful; she writes a regular newspaper column in which she exposes their foibles and hypocrisies.
Sheilagh appears in the previous two novels of the Newfoundland Trilogy: The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Custodian of Paradise. Both titles are actually mentioned by Sheilagh. It is not necessary to read these books first, but they do provide background to events which are mentioned in this third book. This book brings Sheilagh’s story to a close. It has been a while since I read the first two novels in the series and I think I may go back to them.
Abandonment and disappearance are central motifs in the novel. Edgar and Megan disappear and leave Ned feeling abandoned. Sheilagh disappeared from the lives of her children and ends up feeling abandoned herself. Prowse abandoned Sheilagh and his children and in the end “There was no sign in [his eyes] of anything.” Phonse, Ned’s uncle, vanished at sea on a calm day and was never found; Nan Finn, in particular, tries to understand what happened to him. Ned adopts a child but makes a fateful decision which he comes to regard as his worst mistake, “his sin against his son, which was all too similar to the one that Edgar and Megan committed against him – abandonment to the hands of strangers.”
Even Newfoundland is abandoned when there is a vote to join Canada; Sheilagh muses about “the colony of unrequited dreams that would never be acknowledged as a nation except by those of us who made it one.” Appropriately, the books about Newfoundland that are collected by both Edgar and Ned are lost or damaged. And it is surely significant that The Last Newfoundlander loses his voice because of a botched operation.
As a former English teacher, I loved the many literary allusions. Sheilagh has a room in a brothel; she paraphrases T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “I grow old, I grow old. In the rooms the women come and go, talking of Mike and Al and Joe.” Ned alludes to Joseph Conrad’s novel when he speaks of being “in quest of the heart of no one’s darkness but my own.” Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar makes an appearance (“’I come to query Cyril, not to please him’”) as does The Tempest (“’We are all such stuff as murder is made of’”).
One theme is that “you can taint your whole life by doing one thing wrong” so “even a good man might be the engine of a tragedy.” This theme is mentioned both at the beginning and the end and developed through the lives of several characters.
Though the book is more than a mystery, interest is certainly maintained throughout as to what happened to the Vanishing Vatchers. Just like Ned, the reader will find him/herself trying to learn what happened to Edgar and Megan and why no trace of them was found. There are sufficient clues given so an astute reader may guess the solution.
I have enjoyed Wayne Johnston’s previous novels and this one is no exception. It is great literary fiction with memorable characters, carefully developed themes, and a strong sense of place.
Note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
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