The Innocents

Reviews

*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE
*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD
*WINNER OF THE 2020 THOMAS RADDALL ATLANTIC FICTION AWARD
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
*NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Written in a language that is at the same time fresh and ancient, Michael Crummey's The Innocents is a (mis)creation myth that demands a reconsideration of what we think we know about love and death, family and loneliness, oblivion and wisdom, horror and beauty, bodies and knowledge, violence and desire. Anchored in exquisite specificity and heartbreaking simplicity, and inviting us into a distant past that makes fresh matters of ever-present concern about survival and sacrifice, Crummey's novel has the capacity to change the way the reader sees the world." —2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury Citation 

"Rich with visceral descriptions and outport dialogue that transports readers in both place and time . . . Crummey deftly portrays the physical elements of adolescence as yet another mystifying imposition of nature, but one that both alienates the Best siblings and irrevocably binds them." —The Globe and Mail

"The Innocents resists reader anticipation at every turn. . . . This willingness to resist the easy narrative path is one of The Innocents' great strengths. . . . Crummey is able to create sentences of considerable beauty and force without ever seeming to overstep himself, a complexity rooted in the emotional weight of the language and his comfort with the vernacular. The novel never reads as excessive; its beauty is restrained, weighted and often heartbreaking. Which is perhaps the best description of the novel overall. Crummey makes a virtue of the self-imposed limitations of the story—essentially two characters in a single setting—to explore the nature of what makes us who we are, what makes a family and the sacrifices that are made in the name of love." —Toronto Star

"A gripping and credible page-turner about children surviving in the wilderness, but more than that: this Adam and Eve struggle to make sense of a world that's somewhere between Eden and Hell. Michael Crummey writes like an avenging angel, never putting a word wrong." —Emma Donoghue, author of Room 

"Michael Crummey's The Innocents is a dazzling and myriad achievement. Set against the unforgiving Newfoundland frontier, this harrowing tale of two siblings eking out a teetering existence is difficult to witness and impossible to put down.  But what makes this story timeless is Crummey's rich depiction of the human heart in extremis, the unflagging beat of life in a world that is too much to bear. Set aside whatever you're reading and pick this up—The Innocents is a masterpiece." —Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek

"Michael Crummey's new novel The Innocents is a fantastic read. Written in graceful and evocative prose, Ada and Evered's story blurs the boundary between the quotidian and the strange until it becomes a meditation on the curious fact of existence itself. A wonderfully provocative and insightful book." —Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds and A Shout in the Ruins

"Few novels have cast their spell on me as deeply as The Innocents. I am reminded of Dickens, not just the nineteenth-century setting and the imperiled children, but the artfulness: brilliant plot, unforgettable minor characters, perfect pacing. Yet Michael Crummey's poetic voice and landscape are his own. The Innocents is brilliant." —Ron Rash, author of Serena

"Crummey's refusal to go where you might expect . . . provides page-turning pleasures. You can't wait to see what happens next. An unusual, gripping period novel from a much-honored Canadian writer." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Harshly beautiful. . . . What begins as a gripping survival tale deepens into a psychological inquiry into intimacy, conflict and what it means to be alone together in the world. . . . Crummey's vivid depictions of nature are attuned to the rhythms of seasonal harvest and evoke the characters' profound isolation in remote Newfoundland. . . . The last scenes of The Innocents manage to both shock and satisfy, and will leave readers thinking about the story of Evered and Ava for a long time." —USA Today 

"A gorgeous portrait of remote Newfoundland of yesterday with a remarkable story of human resilience at its core." —Booklist

"[A] profoundly heart-wrenching story." —Maclean's 

"Moving. . . . The relentless bleakness is alleviated by the cinematic depiction of the surrounding wilderness, with Crummey's prose recalling that of Jim Crace in its strange, archaic terminology and sense of timelessness." —Library Journal

"Imagine Into the Wild with prepubescents, told in the voice of a William Blake acolyte as verbally inventive as Tolkien. . . . The Innocents is a survivor narrative and a psychological thriller, a chilling study in isolation." —Vulture

Praise for Michael Crummey

"Michael Crummey is without a doubt one of Canada's finest writers." —The Globe and Mail

"Crummey is a poet and a storyteller and he has an extraordinary way of pinning down even a squirming reader and charming them into submission. He's wise in that old soul way. He explores human nature, charting the moral choices of his characters without passing judgement. . . . Crummey's gift is to write with compassion, imbuing the relationships with complexity and depth. He doesn't make anything simple—or simplistic." —National Post

"It's a rare writer who can fashion a vivid memorial to an all-but-vanished way of life; it's a rarer one who can excavate the vernacular and raise it to planes so poignantly and viscerally true, the exquisite beauty of the apparently ordinary shimmers with a matter-of-fact clarity guaranteed to curl your toes." —Toronto Star

"Crummey's craftsmanship is masterful." —Maclean's

"Crummey's elegant prose and storytelling prowess make abundantly clear [that] no man is an island." —The New York Times Book Review

"Crummey's poetics are like the landscape he describes: stark and sparse, but punctuated with a wild richness that creates the impression of something carefully controlled yet on the verge of bursting. . . . In Crummey's capable hands, the setting breeds magic, and the individuals that populate its rugged terrain are nuanced and real." —The Walrus Expand reviews