Custodian of Paradise

In his new book, The Custodian of Paradise, Johnston builds on the story he began in The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and gives us a riveting narrative with Sheilagh Fielding at its heart. At the beginning of the novel, Fielding advancing on middle age, hobbled by disfigurement and personal demons is headed for Loreburn, a deserted island off the south coast of Newfoundland. She has chosen the island after an extensive search through census records, which confirmed that it once had a small town of which only boarded-up houses remain; it is now home to not a single soul. Fielding has no idea what to expect of Loreburn, yet she brings two enormous trunks with her and plans for an extended stay.

Fielding has borne a lifetime of estrangement and heartbreak by setting herself apart from the rest of St. Johns society, and by relying on her eccentricity and wit to keep others at bay. By cultivating her isolation, shes been able to escape the worlds “swirling surfeit of detail” and write, both in her journals and for the Telegram. And by skirting Prohibition laws, shes also been able to dull the pain of her early years. Fieldings mother had deserted her husband and only child when Fielding was just six years old, with no explanation. Unable to figure out why a woman would abandon her child, her father was left tormented by the question of Fieldings paternity. She is six-foot-three and nothing at all like him . . . can she possibly be his child? And when Fielding fell briefly and terribly in love as a teenager, she was left, ultimately, more alone than ever. And alone she remains that is, except for the mysterious stranger she calls her Provider, who has shadowed her ever since she made a mysterious pilgrimage to her mothers house in New York City more than two decades earlier.

Gradually, we learn what has brought her to this wild island. As Fielding revisits her articles, letters and journals, we are swept up in her tumultuous lifes journey and the mystery of this Providers identity. From the downtrodden streets of New Yorks immigrant neighbourhoods to the sanatorium where she fights TB, from the remote workers shacks of the Bonavista rail line to the underbelly of wartime St. Johns, the Provider seems to have devoted himself to charting Fieldings every move and to sending her maddeningly cryptic letters about his role in her life. Yet he has also protected her at times, and their correspondence, as it develops, becomes a form of sustenance for Fielding. While she fears that he may have followed her to Loreburn, she fears even more that he may not be able to find her there.

With The Custodian of Paradise, Wayne Johnston continues his masterful exploration of life in pre-Confederation Newfoundland, and of the powerful forces that give rise to great character individualism, circumstance, and secrecy; memory, loss, and regret.

I look out across the water which some days, depending on the size of the pond and the strength of the wind, is whitecapped, the waves all racing away from me towards the distant shore.

The water, because the sky is uniformly overcast, is grey, even black. And all around the water the treeless boulder-littered bog of Bonavista. Blueberry bushes, their leaves a russet red, bobbing in the wind, the few remaining alder leaves crackling like bits of ancient parchment.

–from The Custodian of Paradise

It is the waning days of World War II and St. John’s is a city of wounded or absent men. At the beginning of the novel, Fielding – as she is almost universally known – is headed for Loreburn, a deserted island off the south coast of Newfoundland. She brings two enormous trunks full of provisions that will make possible an extended stay. Gradually, we begin to learn what has brought her, a lame woman with a broken heart, to a wild island populated by horses, dogs and, perhaps, one other person she has never seen. He is the one who has been shadowing her since she made a mysterious pilgrimage to her mother’s house in New York City more than two decades earlier.

Fielding’s mother had deserted her husband and only child when Fielding was just six years old, and, unable to figure out why a woman would abandon her child, her father was left tormented by the question of Fielding’s paternity. She is six-foot-three and nothing at all like him. Is she indeed his child? When, as a teenager and already a renowned wit and eccentric, Fielding falls briefly and terribly in love, she is left, ultimately, more alone than ever. Now, more than two decades later, she is in mourning and hounded by regret. She has no idea how to continue living when she arrives in Loreburn with her trunks and their peculiar contents.

In The Custodian of Paradise, Wayne Johnston gives us a magnificent portrait of his celebrated character. And he does so in a novel of immense storytelling power and grace.

I look out across the water which some days, depending on the size of the pond and the strength of the wind, is whitecapped, the waves all racing away from me towards the distant shore.

The water, because the sky is uniformly overcast, is grey, even black. And all around the water the treeless boulder-littered bog of Bonavista. Blueberry bushes, their leaves a russet red, bobbing in the wind, the few remaining alder leaves crackling like bits of ancient parchment.

–from The Custodian of Paradise

He graduated with a B.A. (Honours) in English from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and worked from 1979 to 1981 as a reporter at the St. Johns Daily News. Being a reporter was a crash course in how society works, but Johnston realized he didnt want it as a career. "Im not that outgoing of a person and you have to be in order to be a good reporter." He moved away from Newfoundland, first to Ottawa, and took up the writing of fiction full-time. In 1983 he graduated with an M.A. from the University of New Brunswick. His first book, The Story of Bobby OMalley, was published shortly after, and won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. He followed this success two years later with The Time of Their Lives, which won the Canadian Authors Associations award for most promising young writer.

Johnstons third novel, The Divine Ryans, again a portrait of Irish Catholic Newfoundland, centres on a nine-year-old hockey fanatic whose father dies and whose family goes to live with relatives who once had money but are fast declining. One of Johnstons most comic novels, it earned him the title of "the Roddy Doyle of Canada." The Divine Ryans won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and has been adapted into a film starring Pete Postlethwaite. Johnston wrote the screenplay, as well as one for the adaptation of his next novel, Human Amusements. Published in 2002, Johnstons first novel to be set outside of Newfoundland is a send-up of televisions early days and follows Audrey Prendergast, whose love for her family blinds her to all else and who sees the new medium of television as the only means of climbing the social ladder.

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Johnstons fifth novel, was shortlisted in 1998 for the most prestigious fiction awards in Canada, the Governor Generals Award and the Giller Prize, the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour and the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize; it won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. It has been called a "Dickensian romp of a novel," and charts the career of Newfoundlands first premier to create a love story and a tragicomic elegy to an impossible country. The novel has been published across North America and Europe and in several languages.

In 1999 Johnston published Baltimores Mansion, his first non-fiction book, a family memoir that also became a national bestseller and won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. Johnston uses the stories of his own childhood and those of his father and grandfather to cast light on Newfoundlands struggle over relinquishing independence in 1949. A National Post reviewer concluded that it was a "non-fiction novel," drawing on all Johnstons narrative powers to "shape the materials of real life into a work of astonishing beauty and power." A reviewer in Quill & Quire commented, "I began to smell the smells, hear the lilt, and experience a sense of the fierce attachment Newfoundlanders feel to their home province no matter where they live."

Johnston has lived in Toronto since 1989, although most of his writing continues to centre on Newfoundland. “I couldnt write about the island while I was there,” he says. "Life was too immediate. I was too inundated by the place and its details. Id write about something and see it when I walked across the street the next day." To write with any kind of objectivity, he continues, "I need distance to get that sense of what is important and what is significant and what is not."

2. Why is Sheilagh so abrasive to others, even to the extent of hurting and pushing away those she loves? Does Sheilagh take pride in the persona she has created for herself, and in her local infamy? Or is it truly just a regrettable consequence of being herself?

3. Sheilaghs Provider writes to her of making a game of devising synonyms for “God,” including “custodian of paradise.” He said to his delegate, “We are all three of us, you and I and Miss Fielding, custodians . . . withdrawn from the world to preserve, to keep inviolate, something that would otherwise be lost.” What are these characters preserving, and are they right or misguided in doing so? In what ways is the Provider playing God?

4. How does the backdrop of the Second World War permeate The Custodian of Paradise? Even at Loreburn, its often at the forefront of Sheilaghs mind. How is Newfoundland affected by the war (e.g. considering its strategic location, and the great losses of its young men)? Is there a comparison to be made between going off to war and going out on the seal hunts?

5. Throughout the novel are references to Sheilaghs need to be indoors, to her late-night walks, to her need for “sanctuary.” Discuss the importance of sanctuary and isolation in this novel, both physical and mental.

6. Why does the Provider keep his identity and his relationship with Sheilaghs mother a secret, yet write such cryptic letters, for two decades?

7. From the missives the Provider sends to Sheilagh, to the Forgeries she publishes, to the scrap of paper reading only “Their names are David and Sarah,” correspondence serves as the backbone of communication in this novel. Discuss the ways in which letters and notes guide the main characters. How does writing relate to truth (or fiction) in the novel? To memory?

8. At the time this novel is set, Newfoundland has yet to join Confederation, and has a remoteness from the rest of Canada that is both geographical and psychological. Talk about how Newfoundland is portrayed, and how Fielding and Smallwood feel about their home.

9. Is there any significance to names such as the S.S. Newfoundland (the sealing boat Smallwood travels on) or the Newfoundland Hotel (where Smallwood and Fielding stay in New York)?

10. Johnston has said that one of the main themes explored in this story is “the attempt to overcome the temptation of vengeance.” How do Sheilagh, the Provider, and even Dr. Fielding fare in their efforts?

11. An entirely fictional character, Sheilagh Fielding made her first appearance in Johnstons The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, his renowned novel based on real-life political figure Joe Smallwood. If youve read the earlier novel, discuss the differing views of and narrative roles of Smallwood and Fielding. How has this novel enriched your memory of Colony?

12. As Sheilagh leaves New York for the first time, she writes, “It is as if, when my children were born, my soul followed theirs into the world and now is lost. It seems there is nothing left of me but matter, mortal matter.” How is this attitude reflected in her life afterwards? Does anything change when she meets David?

13. In the final chapter, on her journey back to wartime St. Johns and to society, Sheilagh thinks, “I am returning to a war that I have never really left,” and even calls her Providers apartment in New York a “book-lined trench.” In what ways do Sheilagh and others view life as a battle to be fought, or as a war to be survived?