Review: Forty Testoons

Alan Fisk, Forty Testoons, (Chronicler Pub, 2007)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6802082-forty-testoons

Spooky story of a conspiracy hatched in a Newfoundland winter

1504 Dominican friar Father Ralph is paid forty testoons, sent to minister to the fishing crews in Newfoundland. He finds a rough, cold country, where settlers have to make do with what they have.

Against his wishes, the last boat leaves him stranded on the beach with the ‘winter crew’. But what is the winter crew even doing there, when there is no fishing work to be done? The crew members each have their own foibles and their own demons, and in the deprivation and isolation, a kind of cabin fever develops. Father Ralph struggles to reach them spiritually.

Why had the crew denied the very existence of the native Beothuks? What is everyone hiding? Incredulously, he discovers it has something to do with Harry Chard the Fishing Fleet Admiral, the Beothuks and the York/Tudor political strife back home in England. An amazing plot has been cooked up during the freezing Newfoundland winter.

The Voice of Father Ralph really comes through. I get a strong sense of his character, and I get a feel for his religious feelings, too. The sense of wonder in the Beothuk’s behaviour is fantastic. I really get the sense that this is something completely alien to Ralph. I loved the ‘Inglis fissmain’ exchange with the Beothuk.

This is a spooky novel; I kept expecting ghosts. The bleakness and cold of the environment really comes across, and I think the journal-like style gives it a tone of loneliness. The tone is very atmospheric, and we get a feel for minds driven mad by cold, isolation and constant silence.

I think that the newness of the setting (most readers, me included, know very little about 15^th century Newfoundland) means the highly reflective journal-entry style works. What I like most is the spooky tone.

I received an ARC from the author.