I’ve been reading two books in tandem this week: Eva Crocker’s All I Ask and Michael Crummey’s The Innocents. It’s by coincidence, not design, that I’m switching back and forth between these two very different visions of Newfoundland. The Innocents is a re-read because I’m interviewing Michael later this month and Eva’s book is hot off the press and I couldn’t wait to crack into my copy.

The Innocents, set at the turn of the 19th century, is about two orphans who eke out an existence in an isolated cove after the death of their parents. They are dirt poor, illiterate, speak in a dialect so heavy it’s nearly a language unto itself, there’s incest, uproarious word play, and a baby seal clubbed to death without fanfare, its bloody heart eaten by hand. The pen of a lesser writer would have reduced this particular Newfoundland story to caricature and farce. But Michael Crummey is no common writer. And what we get instead is the antidote to those stereotypes: a deep understanding for the realities of the time, the place, the truth of the matter, and above all: characters with dignity. Could an outsider have pulled this off? Highly doubtful. Could even a CFA have done it? I don’t think so.

I’m reminded of Alicia Elliott’s essay, On Seeing and Being Seen, and specifically these lines: “If you can’t write about us with a love for who we are as a people, what we’ve survived, what we’ve accomplished despite all attempts to keep us from doing so; if you can’t look at us as we are and feel your pupils go wide, making all stereotypes feel like a sham, a poor copy, a disgrace—then why are you writing about us at all?”

The us in her essay are Indigenous Peoples but that sentiment can apply to Newfoundlanders too. The difference is that Newfoundland isn’t lacking in local authors, and many have significant platforms and wide readerships. This is a very recent phenomenon. Used to be, the books read about this place were written by outsiders and with mixed results at best. The Shipping News, for example, came out a good five years before Wayne Johnston got his big break with Colony of Unrequited Dreams and it took the Burning Rock longer still to fully burst onto the scene. But today we’re lucky to have a parliament of authors* - beloved not just here but far beyond the island - and all of them telling different Newfoundland stories. So it’s possible to read about a pair of youngsters catching capelin in one book and queer, urban 20-somethings protesting in another.

The latter is Eva Crocker’s wonderful debut novel, All I Ask which is so firmly situated in the here and now I could imagine crossing paths with her characters. Eva is a master of enviable dialogue and precise descriptions (we first met in a writing class nearly a decade ago and reading her work influenced my own precise descriptions) but for my money it’s the way she captures real life on the page. You’d swear every word and situation was true. What you get from her work, and this book specifically, is a time capsule of urban, contemporary St. John’s.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has famously warned about the danger of a single story and I was thinking about that too…how necessary it is to have these two books situated cheek by jowl on the shelf. Along with Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles. And Something for Everyone by Lisa Moore. And Dig by Terry Doyle. And A Roll of The Bones by Trudy Morgan Coles. And Melissa Barbeau’s The Luminous Sea. And Jamie Fitzpatrick’s The End of Music. And Tom Dawe’s poetry. And Mark Callanan’s Gift Horse. These are all different Newfoundland stories and they are also the same Newfoundland story.

*Incidentally, what would be a good collective noun for a group of authors? An excellence of authors? A ream? A procrastination? That’s my favourite one. More funny suggestions here.