sweetlandSweetland is the story of a 70-year-old man resisting the resettlement of the island where his family has lived for 12 generations. At the start of the book he’s one of the only two people who still hasn’t signed the very profitable deal to leave the island. There’s major pressure from his neighbors to take the money because it’s a “all or none” deal and he starts being a victim of pranks and anonymous threats.

I’ve a weak spot for novels set in remote islands. Newfoundland seems a fertile ground for them (Latitudes of Melt, The Shipping News, An Orange from Portugal) so it’s no wonder that my favorite thing about this book was its sense of setting: the isolation, the cold, the claustrophobic community life, the inevitability of a dying life style.

I’m also sure that when thinking about it in the future I’ll also remember that selfish feeling of being upset because the author didn’t take the story where you wanted it to go! #readersproblems

It’s a slow book that ends up not being so much about the relocation as about loss, getting old, community and ties to the land. I didn’t really connect a lot with the characters but was interested in knowing where their stories led. There’s this mixture of humor and tragedy in the writing that make you unsure whether they’ll get a happy ending or not. (Books like that make me a bit anxious, but maybe that’s a good thing?).

On the audio, John Lee has a very particular intonation that, although interesting, is distracting. He uses it in all characters, even if they have distinct voices, so it becomes very difficult to forget there’s such a thing as a narrator.

Overall an enjoyable book about a place I’m curious about, but not an Armchair Audies winner. I can see it turned into a movie soon!

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Other thoughts: largehearted boy, buried in print, Becky’s Books, Feminist Mexican Reads,  A Bookworm’s Works, Sophisticated Dorkiness, Lindy Reads and Reviews,