Do You like book The Custodian Of Paradise (2007)?
Johnston is a master storyteller, and The Custodian of Paradise is no exception. This novel focuses on Sheilagh Fielding's odd life (readers of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams will remember her from that novel). Long, but worthwhile. This novel may be challenging for young readers - it may be difficult for them to believe how damaging something as commonplace as divorce was a century ago, how scandalous it was for a woman to smoke and drink, how an illegitimate birth could ruin not only her life but also her family's, how much secrecy lay at the heart of the families who made up 'the quality.' It is, therefore, an important book not only for its literary value but also for its contribution to social history.
—Ruth Seeley
Surely, a wish that a fictional character be something other than the person portrayed by its author, tells us more about a reader than it reveals anything about the book. Just as surely, if an author has any at all understanding of his story, he has the right to birth his characters in the image of his choosing. And yet, I can't refrain from feeling disappointment at Wayson Johnston's disfigurement of Sheilagh Fielding in his sequel ("sequel" is a stretch for much of the novel; "reiteration," though less kind, would be more accurate) to The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.The character of Sheilagh Fielding in Colony was developed with the artistry of restraint, the craft of a master: revealed by light and shadow rather than flesh, drawn with negative space, she glowed through her newspaper columns, her journal entries and snippets of her History, and the frustrated and myopic point of view of Smallwood, by comparison a minor figure. When Johnston recreates her as the POV of The Custodian of Paradise the reader, sadly, becomes privy to her doubts and insecurities, her regrets and fears. What, in Colony seemed heroic and stoic, inscrutable and unassailable, becomes, in Custodian self-absorbed and weak, ordinary, as victimized and uncomfortable as Smallwood himself in the prequel, albeit with much greater social and psychological justification.If the hard-nosed, hard-drinking, hard-done-by Sheilagh Fielding were Johnston's symbol for the colony of Newfoundland and it's unrequited dream of nationhood, then perhaps the more timid, less heroic, often deluded Sheilagh Fielding of Custodian might symbolize the province of Newfoundland under the gargantuan wing of a Provider who rescues, preaches to, supports and overshadows her. In Custodian, for me, Sheilagh, perhaps for the sake of historical authenticity, loses her mystique, her charm, her witty aloofness, and is supplanted in importance by the difficult-to-believe, difficult-to-either-like-or-empathize-with, difficult-to-identify-or-comprehend Provider. O Canada? Clearly I must be wrong on this one.
—Brian
WARNING - if you have not yet read The Colony Of Unrequited Dreams, and think you might like to do so, read it before you read The Custodian of Paradise. While both books are said to stand alone, The Custodian of Paradise is a sequel, and I think would serve as quite a spoiler if one read the two books in the wrong order. I am so glad that I got to know the delightfully unconventional, tragically damaged and hilariously witty Sheilagh Fielding in The Colony of Unrequited Dreams before I got to know her even better in The Custodian of Paradise. I finished TCOUD wanting more of Sheilagh Fielding, and in this book Wayne Johnston delivered. In creating a fictional foil for the real life character of Joey Smallwood in TCOUD, Johnston created a larger than life character that almost dwarfed Smallwood and whose story just need to be continued. I'm glad he decided to tell her story in more detail. It doesn't pack the historical punch of TCOUD, it being hard to beat the story of the birth of a province and all, but it is an interesting look at society in the early twentieth century, when women were judged harshly if they smoked, drank, or even remain unmarried, and when a pregnancy out of wedlock spelled social ruin for the woman and her family. It examines the length to which families of the time would go to keep secrets and preserve their family's reputation. It also provides an interesting glimpse into prohibition and the underground economy that it created. If Wayne Johnston decides to write about Sheilagh Fielding again, I will be first in line to read it.
—Gail Amendt