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Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador | 
 enlarge | Author: John Gimlette
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 204761
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 1400078539
Dewey Decimal Number: 917
EAN: 9781400078530
ASIN: 1400078539
Publication Date: November 14, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Gift Quality! No marks or tears.
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Product Description
Newfoundland is one of the most intriguing places in North America, a land of breathtaking but cruel beauty, populated by some of the saltiest, oddest characters you’ll ever find. In Theatre of Fish, John Gimlette vividly describes the dense forests and forbidding coastlines and recounts the colorful and often tragic history of the region. He introduces us to the inhabitants, from the birds and moose to the descendants of the outlaws, deserters, and fishermen who settled this eastern edge of North America. Leavened with irreverence and affection, this is an irresistible portrait of life in extremis.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 A new classic February 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's hard to imagine how this book could be improved upon. It is, first, a wonderful work of descriptive prose, containing brilliant character sketches in St. Johns, the horrors of a demoralized Native village, and the beauties of the various landscapes he encounters.
To this, add a piercing historical review, containing not only exhaustive research but also the incomparable advantage of his grandfather's diaries, giving a first-hand account of perhaps the most significant events in the province's history. This would be akin to having the private papers of George Washington's aide-de-camp while writing about Valley Forge.
To this, add Gimlette's inimitable writing style, which is deadly precise when needed and startling funny when the mood strikes him. His unprovoked description of moose as "luggage-faced, ugly, skinny-arsed, bog-squelching oafs" still makes me laugh. There's really nothing to be gained by romanticizing these creatures, as Gimlette understands.
 Falling Out of Love April 10, 2007
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I wonder if Newfoundland or Labrador has a Tourist Board or some such. If so, I don't think you'll find this book among their recommendations. Time and again, Gimlette promises to treat the land and its denizens fairly. This, he does. Unfortunately, this retelling the story of the people and their history is gruesome, despairing, horrific and almost irremediably bleak. From expert methods of scalping (down to the lips) by the historical aborigines to death by silicosis and the epidemic of glue-sniffing youth in more contemporary times, Gimlette spares not a detail in depicting a place I, for one, do not EVER want to visit, any more than I would want to visit Central Europe during the Thirty Years War. I see that a fellow reviewer has already packed up his kit. I wonder how long he'll last.
I don't understand either why Gimlette's language has been dubbed "poetic". Perhaps these reviewers haven't read much poetry, but suffused with dark humour more aptly describes the writing. Visiting the outpost of Burgeo, Gimlette remarks, "I can think of no more perfect place to fall out of love." I can think of no more perfect book to make me stay away from Newfies and their land. Those of you who found this book somehow endearing must have turned the pages when the going got gruesome---about three/fourths of it. To Romanticize Newfoundland or Labrador is to Romanticize Hell on Earth.
I am reminded of what the poet John Masefield (a great adventurer in his youth) said about it in his later years, "Have you ever seen a lost dog turning one way and then another to avoid being killed by a motorcar in the middle of a busy street? That's adventure."
3 stars for the historical interest. Deo Laus, though, to be finished with this chronicle of rape, murder, suicide and chronic depression.
A most unusual travel book June 2, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
John Gimlette is downright poetic as he describes the geographic, social and sad economic landscape of Newfoundland and Labrador. This prose poetry has a style, but I'm at a loss to say what that style could be called.
His ability to turn a phrase, though, is outdone by the Newfies and Labs themselves... "She'd an eye for my father... always put her tent up he did"... a boat ran into "dirty weather" (a hurricane) and "Got no eyes... got no teeth... but I still shoot". Once you get into it, you laugh out loud when Gimlette tells a local he's a lawyer. Without any of the modern sensibilities about this, the Newfie resonds, "So you're a li'ar, you say."
It's a harsh world he describes using information that I don't believe is available anywhere else. Besides quotes from his great great grandfather's journal, there are recounts of new stories and oral histories. One weakness is that not all sources are attributed in the text and there are no footnotes. He catalogs many horrible ways people have died of cold, hunger and dogs. He tells of famous people who came to this area, made history and left without a trace.
Gimlette describes the "Truck" system that ruled till the 1950s, the fish equivalent of sharecropping, that served to entrench poverty. (Some fisherman never used money in their lives.) With the end of fish in the 1990's, government assistance helped some and 50,000 others left.
I've been to the South Coast of Newfoundland, which he briefly describes in more positive terms than any other place in the book. Reading about this merely "Dickensian" area is somewhat like a relief after all the tragedy JG describes elsewhere on this rock. I stayed in a home much like he describes (clean... momentos... scant furnishings...no running water). The beauty of the landscape and the hospitality of the people left me totally unaware of the suffering all around. This book, is lovingly written and communicates the writer's affection for the area and his understanding of and empathy with its people.
If Gimlette decides to trace his great great grandfather's steps in China, I'll be very interested in that book.
A View Into a Forgotten Corner of The World April 12, 2006
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
An interesting narrative of the author's travels through Newfoundland and Labrador- a little known corner of North America. An intriguing insight to the fall of a society when the natural resources - i.e., the Cod - disappeared.
"Piscium inexhaustia copia" January 17, 2006
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
"Fish without end" is Newfoundland and Labrador's social, economic and political burden. For something no longer there, the weight seems strangely ponderous. In this account of Canada's youngest Province [cliche for sale - cheap], barrister and travel writer John Gimlette takes us on an historical and sociological tour of the Newfoundland that was - and is. Although a Londoner, Gimlette has ties to "The Rock". His great-grandfather, Dr Eliot Curven, tended bodies and souls in the distant colony, and Wilfred Grenfell was headmaster of Gimlette's school. Grenfell's adventures in Newfoundland clearly helped inspire Gimlette's sprightly prose in relating his follow-along journey.
Gimlette understands the multicultural foundation of this location at "the Edge of the World" as many Canadians do not. He reminds us of the Basque, Portugese, and Spanish who preceded the first hesitant British probings along those shores. He reminds us that cod [the only fish under consideration here] could be taken up in baskets. Photographs in the book show these weren't "pan frys" but substantial animals. With fish so plentiful and the means to take them so restricted, it was natural that control of the industry would pass to a few. Gimlette describes the rise of the "Fishocracy" where a few merchants controlled the flow and price of fish. That control passed along to the entire social structure of the island. Even the "home" government in London had far less power than the merchants. There were the merchants and the fishermen - no "middle class" could arise and farming was next to impossible on the rocky barrens. And now the fish are gone.
Using his great-grandfather's journal, Gimlette tours The Rock [Newfoundland] and along the Labrador coast. His journey is spiced with historical accounts of the original settlers and their modern descendants. The stories aren't always happy reading. Poverty and struggle are a fundamental element in life here. If nothing else, the wind is able to toss houses and shift churches on their foundations. And in tightly packed communities of wooden dwellings, fire is an ever-present threat. St John's itself burned in the 19th Century alone. Grenfell arrived just after one of these conflagrations. In remote towns, dogs offer one threat while the polar bears provide another. Life here may be hard, but it shouldn't be boring. Yet that's exactly what led one of Gimlette's contacts into local politics.
Gimlette's narrative is a rollicking adventure of observation and commentary. He's hardly a "detached" journalist, as his account of Premier Joey Smallwood's career demonstrates. There are heroes, heroines and villains aplenty. Gimlette manages to understand a few of them, even though 66 dialects have been identified and to him, one man sounds as if he's "speaking Irish through shingle". Gimlette doesn't fall into the trap of simply cataloging local idiosyncracies, however. He's more interested in, and relates with fine prose skills, the lives and struggles of people living in a forbidding place. Ye'll never use the term 'Newfie' again, b'y. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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