From prizewinning author Michael Crummey comes a spellbinding story of survival in which a brother and sister confront the limits of human endurance and their own capacity for loyalty and forgiveness.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 GILLER PRIZE, GOVERNOR GENERAL'S PRIZE AND WRITER'S TRUST FICTION AWARD

The Innocents is richly imagined and compulsively readable. A riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves.

In centuries past, a brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated outport cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to help them survive.

Muddling through the severe round of the seasons, through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE, THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S PRIZE, AND THE ROGER'S WRITER'S TRUST FICTION AWARD

About the Author
MICHAEL CRUMMEY was born in Buchans, a mining town in the interior of Newfoundland, growing up there and in western Labrador. After thirteen years in self-imposed exile in Ontario, he moved home to Newfoundland in 2000. He is the author of five books of poetry, a book of short stories, and four other celebrated novels, including the Giller prize-nominated River Thieves. He lives in St. John's.

Reviews
Crummey does a powerfully unsettling job of imagining how the onset of sexual feelings and self-consciousness would affect an isolated brother and sister -- James Walton * Times *
Brilliantly written. Different. Unique. * Between The Pages Bookclub *
This is a vivid reimagining of nature and a study of intimacy, involving and compassionate -- Paul Burke * NB Magazine *
Beautifully written [...] It is an unusual book that will stay with me for a long time -- Maggie Macdonald * Netgalley *
Beautiful, brutal and raw [...] Inspired by a story the author found in local archives, this is an incredibly haunting novel - the language powerfully pure, the story uniquely thought-provoking -- Joanne Owen * LoveReading *



Book Information
ISBN 9780857304261
Author Michael Crummey
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint No Exit Press
Publisher Bedford Square Publishers