It was not only an honour to win and receive an advanced giveaway copy of the novel, Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan through Goodreads, but to read it as well.

As a reviewer, I feel much like the character Wilda Burry when, "[h] er head wavered slightly, [her] lids lowered, and she whispered, 'I don't even know how to begin.'"

Because really, this novel by Nicole Lundrigan is rich with storytelling and family history between the Trench and Fagan families, which at its heart is the core and drama of the book.

The characters, though broken by the altering affects of their relationships, are fiercely honest both in mannerism and dialogue that soon you, as the reader, develop an ease through Lundrigan's well-paced writing to surely and eventually feel affection for even the worst of the characters and the trouble and darkness that haunts and lies within them.

The chapters, too, end with stark passages that the prose fiction itself transpires into the stuff of poems and wonderful imagery.

There is much to enjoy in the landscape of Newfoundland, in its dialect, and in these characters. Though most, if not all, are left with emotional scarring, heavy blueprints of tangled and complicated pasts, Lundrigan's writing is neither obtuse nor jarring. And though she covers a span of difficult and sensitive subject matter, she does so with serious, yet tender pen strokes.

What I thoroughly enjoyed was the precise unravelling of the plot, the depiction and the context of strong brotherly love, and Lundrigan`s ability as a female writer to write her male characters so convincingly well.

It is a hidden gem of a novel, filled with dark lusts and perversions, displacement and yearning, recollection and reconciliation if not only with others, but oneself, and is bewitchingly hopeful amongst a long line of tragedy, which should catapult Nicole Lundrigan as an author to where she rightly deserves to be: highly acclaimed and on every bookshelf!











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First Reads book.
So after only three days from when the Goodreads giveaway ended, I got this book, and am now starting to read it. Thank you to Nicole Lundrigan for being so prompt in sending it (though I must talk to the UPS person who brought it; throwing the package being delivered is very bad form).

So I've been reading it in fits and starts, due to the fact that this is an emotionally punishing book. It is very hard on the psyche. I am definitely enjoying it. ( )

I couldn't put this book down! The story moves between different time frames but never gives the feeling of being disjointed as sometimes happens when scenes move over a span of years. Lundrigan's story is raw but touching, a clever construction of characters who are all formed by their pasts. Highly recommended. ( )

In the opening pages of Glass Boys, abusive, angry Eli Fagan, discovers his stepson, Garrett, is hiding an unspeakable secret. At the same time, Lewis Trench, the newly appointed constable of Knife's Point, Newfoundland and his brother Roy are getting drunk on potato whiskey. The two families cross paths in one fateful, accidental moment, and Roy Trench is killed. The incident is ruled an accident. Eli Fagan returns to his wife and stepson and eventually has two daughters. Lewis Trench meets a woman in a curio shop after the trial and takes her home to Knife's Point to be his wife. The couple have a pair of sons, sensitive, eager to please Melvin, and Toby, a less thoughtful but more enthusiastic boy. Though the two families attempt to avoid each other and their shared sordid past, the past can't be escaped, and the years never seem to ease the pain and anger between the two men, until the incident's echoes reverberate into a new generation.

Glass Boys takes some getting used to. For starters, Newfoundland has a dialect and Lundrigan has taken care to reflect it in her writing. There are s's on the ends of words where every fiber of a sensible reader's being supposes there shouldn't be. Lundrigan's prose relies on sentence fragments for emphasis. The first few chapters are, as a result, confusing and a little hard to digest.

Once the first few chapters are past, however, a profound, if dark, multi-layered story emerges. Lundrigan's characters are richly drawn and haunted by the secrets of their respective pasts which are spread out before us like a breadcrumb trail to an unexpected destination. Lundrigan's story is undeniably gritty and doesn't shy away from the worst things the human heart has to offer, but at the same time, just the tiniest trace of magic runs through Lundrigan's tale, just a tiny trace of hope that the younger generation might just be able to untangle the knot of hate that binds the two families together, however they might try to avoid its legacy. The feeling that redemption seems to always lie only a page away makes this literary work unputdownable.

Despite its darkness, Glass Boys is likely my favorite read of the year thus far. Lundrigan's story is, at times, hard to read, simply because of its subject matter, but she gives voice to her characters so well that even when they are flawed and loathesome, they still attract our sympathy, except, of course, for the one that doesn't quite. Mostly male characters figure in Glass Boys, and Lundrigan proves herself remarkably adept at portraying thoughts, feelings, and actions even from across the gender divide. In my experience dark stories rarely have satisfying ends, but Lundrigan defied my experience ending the book in a way that doesn't trivialize the rest of her story by wrapping up too easily but also doesn't neglect the catharsis we crave after having our hearts broken along with the characters we've come to care for deeply. Highly, highly recommended. ( )

Unflinching honest, with a vivid rawness, this is a story set in Newfoundland. A young boy, something in a jar and two brothers, one which ends up dead sets the stage for this atmospherically dark novel. The reader doesn't learn what was in the jar until further in the book as the story unravels with some brilliant prose, an honest treatment of a difficult subject. Light against darkness, a different set of brothers and a deep sense of foreboding, the reader is always aware that there is a reckoning of some kind coming. Will the past repeat the present, or will there be a better ending and a positive change that can be built upon? This is a book that will probably not appeal to everyone. Yet readers who like gritty, honest novels like those of Bonnie Jo Campbell will find much to admire in this extremely well written novel. ( )