THE COLONY OF UNREQUITED DREAMS

by Wayne Johnston

I’m going to be upfront here: this book took a long time to grab my interest, and even after finishing it, there are huge sections that never really interested me. But it’s a sneaky one, and since finishing it, I have found myself remembering the characters as though they were people I knew. And it certainly taught me a great deal of Newfoundland's history, about which I knew absolutely nothing.

The Colony is set primarily in St John, Newfoundland and covers the 40 or so years leading up to confederation with Canada in 1949. Joe Smallwood, the protagonist, comes from an incredibly poor family and is constantly having to start from square one in search of his dream to one day be Prime Minister. He is an inventive young man and travels physically and politically down some very interesting paths.

The most interesting part of the story to me is his relationship with Fielding, a young woman whose path crosses his again and again, almost always with disastrous results. In a time when most women were wives, mothers and homemakers, Fielding is a reporter fighting some intense personal demons. Johnston intersperses the plot with entries from Fielding’s diary and short chapters from the book she is writing about the history of Newfoundland. These are highly ironic, but sometimes hard for me to decipher not knowing the true history that she is ironizing.

Overall I’m glad I read it, but unless you are looking to expand your Canadian historical knowledge, I’d probably give this one a pass. (Lily)