I finished Kit's Law last night. My gawd! The melodrama!
It turns out it's the Reverend who took advantage of Kit's poor retarded mother and he is in fact Kit's father, but we don't know this till after she's gone and eloped with the Reverend's son, her half-brother, Sid, just after he's returned from a 2-year stint in jail, having taken the rap for the murder of that vicious thug the retarded mother ran 'round with, whom she actually killed when he was attacking Kit and Sid.
Ugh! Who writes this stuff?
Yes, the author evokes a great sense of time and place (though I found it distracting to have to muddle through the Newfoundland dialect — just not natural to my sensibility). But it's not as if the plot is even halfway believable. And the characters don't have any particular insight. These grand themes (well, let's see: dealing with the mentally unwell mother, incest, death, love, blah, blah) invite no real discussion. The ending is suddenly vague, airy, poetic — an amateur's trick to lend importance to the resolution. But I dislike this turn in authorial voice, and see no reason for the closing scenes to be put forth in any other than the straight-forward, matter-of-fact manner that preceded this mess.
But I finished it.
Can't believe it would've been offered up on the Canada Reads People's Choice list.
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