Colony of Unrequited Dreams (Johnston)

Book Reviews
[T]his prodigious, eventful, character-rich book is a noteworthy achievement: a biting, entertaining and inventive saga.... [Its] themes include love and betrayal but also the remorseless contest for power that takes place in both the psychic and the political spheres..... It all adds up to a brilliant and bravura literary performance by Johnston.
Richard Bernstein - New York Times


Johnston...has set out to write the definitive Newfoundland novel, and yes, he is well aware of how that phrase will ring in the ears of outsiders.... [T]he book has about it an aura of something akin to magic realism, or its northern equivalent—nothing remotely supernatural occurs, and yet...causes and effects often seem to have been paired off by a particularly whimsical deity.... A novel of cavernous complexity that nevertheless doesn't overwhelm the reader, who can repose in pure narrative without second thoughts—[an] eloquent anti-epic.
Luc Sante - New York Times Book Review


Throughout Joe's narrative of his unlikely rise, the author interrupts with selections from Fielding's hysterically sarcastic Condensed History of Newfoundland, her brutal newspaper columns, and her emotional diary. The friction between all these voices generates a tremendous degree of light and heat in this icebound story.... Joe says, "Newfoundland stirred in me, as all great things did, a longing to accomplish or create something commensurate with it." Clearly, Johnston has done just that.
Ron Charles - Chistian Science Monitor


Treating the history of Newfoundland as a bad joke—whose punch line is finally delivered on April 1, 1949, when the in-limbo British territory joins in confederation with Canada—Johnston's most compelling character (in a book that teems with eccentrics, drunks, swindlers and snobs), Sheilagh Fielding, writes a condensed version of the classic History of Newfoundland. The terse and mordant chapters of this masterwork, to which she devotes all her energies...are interleaved in the narrative to great effect. The bulk of the book comprises the autobiographical musings of historical figure Joe Smallwood, whose rise through local socialist activism to international political eminence culminates in his orchestration of the treaty with Canada. It is dwarf-sized Smallwood's tireless ambition, as well as his crippling romantic insecurity, that keep him forever at arm's length from his childhood love and best friend Fielding....each harboring the shame and fury of a secret from their school days that has gone unresolved. In a book of this magnitude and inventiveness—some of Fielding's quips are hilarious, and Johnston proves himself cunning at manipulating and animating historical fact—it is perhaps the device of this lifelong secret that most tests the reader's faith: that full disclosure resolves all the complicated mysteries of this book is slightly disappointing. Nonetheless, the variety provided by Fielding's writings is delightful, and this brilliantly clever evocation of a slice of Canadian history establishes Johnston as a writer of vast abilities and appeal.
Publishers Weekly


Angela's Ashes meets Moby Dick meets All the King's Men! Famed and feted in Canada, this fictional biography of Joe Smallwood, Liberal first premier of Britain's former colony of Newfoundland, and his longtime (fictional) love, Shelagh Fielding, is sure to set off sparks here. Smallwood governed for 23 years; the story of how he achieved his elevated position after a childhood of poverty and want, and what he surrendered along the way, is mesmerizing. The central scenes of class warfare are preceded and followed by a beautiful and horrifying set piece about a sealing voyage. Joe's story is interspersed with hilarious excerpts from the Condensed History of Newfoundland by Shelagh Fielding, easily one of the more original characters in fiction. Carrying a "purely ornamental" cane since girlhood, almost constantly sipping from a flask of Scotch, she is a TB victim, a political writer with no visible principles, and a railroad worker who won't join a union to keep her job—and ends up being fascinating whatever she does. Johnston's first novel to be published here, this is recommended for all fiction collections.
—Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY
Library Journal


The subject of this immensely satisfying neo-Victorian is ...the generously imagined fictional biography of a real historical figure, Joseph Smallwood, the self-styled Father of Confederation who shepherded the former British dominion into full union with Canada in 1949. Johnston's rich narrative is presented in three forms: Joe Smallwood's own detailed recall of his life is punctuated by excerpts from the Journal of Shelagh Fielding, his lifelong friend and enemy...and also by snippets from her hilarious Condensed History of Newfoundland, a mock-heroic and episodic chronicle.... Smallwood is a wonderfully convincing tragicomic figure, and Fielding an even better one: an embittered alcoholic enslaved to a secret she withholds throughout the pair's 40-year love-hate relationship. Only in the parallel secret harbored by Smallwood...does Johnston's superb plot deviate from its overall power and originality. As absorbing as fiction can be and a marvelous introduction to the work of one of our continent's best writers.
Kirkus Reviews