Book Review...Where I Belong by Alan Doyle

This is my first attempt to write a book review…Where I Belong by Alan Doyle

I was like a child again on the night before Christmas waiting for Santa to arrive with a special present. It was quiet in the house and I was snug in my bed. Something woke me up and I checked my phone. Santa (Google Play) has come early and delivered Alan Doyle’s book Where I Belong in digital form. I would have preferred the book, but considering I live about as far away as one can get from Newfoundland, the words and pictures had arrived over the Internet and on my phone and I could at last read them. I was thrilled. Nothing ever came early for me in this fandom.

For weeks now the publishers and the fandom has been talking about this book. I had been selective about what I read and reviewed. I didn’t want others words and ideas in my headspace when I read this book. During the waiting time I had read a range of digital books about Newfoundland including The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, A Whale For The Killing by Farley Mowat, and an interesting book called Making Witches, Newfoundland Traditions of Spells and Counterspells by Barbara Rieti. These books help set the scene for life in small rural communities in Newfoundland as I have no real experience myself. An outsider's perspective of small traditional communities of Newfoundland.  

Then there were my own outsider experiences of being in Newfoundland and visiting the fishing village of Petty Harbour. I spent a couple of hours there last year with some Canadians who had made Newfoundland their home and a Newfoundlander. The memories came flooding back. The visit helped set the scene for the book and I am there with Alan Doyle, walking the wharves and streets, seeing the homes set on the hills, the churches and other buildings including the general store, watching the fisherman do their work, looking at the fishing boats in the harbour and walking the bridge that divided the town and the river that went under it. It is the physical environment of Petty Harbour which is what most tourists see and Great Big Sea fans see when they make the pilgrimage.

What most tourists don’t get to know about is the most important part of this town, its people and their cultural and social traditions and history. About a chapter into the book and I have a lot of my questions answered. There is the theme of insiders and outsiders whether it’s on social media, within Canada itself, Newfoundland, St John’s or a rural fishing village. Who is a Canadian and who isn’t? Who belongs to Newfoundland and who doesn’t? Who belongs to Petty Harbour and who doesn’t? Belonging is one of the biggest questions and most interesting subjects about Newfoundland. Alan Doyle explains that point very early on and very well. Yes, it is a complicated question that varies from individual to individual. It is about being born into that community, into Newfoundland, and where one lives but also about feelings and acceptance by both outsiders and insiders. A sense of belonging in this part of the world is I think unconscious but fluid and constantly changing as one goes about their daily life.

Religion is another one of the fascinating themes of Newfoundland. Alan Doyle writes about this at length. On one hand religion unites people within a small community like Petty Harbour, determines where one lives, goes to school, works and interacts with as well as what one believes in during his childhood. No matter what challenges arise and there are plenty in rural Newfoundland including the weather and the economic hardships, the people still remain very much divided along those lines but united in their love of Newfoundland. I will let you read the book to see what I am talking about for this small fishing village and from the words of Alan Doyle himself. Religion obviously had an impact on his life even at a very young age, more than helping him to get a job as a teacher, he completed a minor in religious studies at university. His mother's advice of being good is something we can all practice and aspire too, even when we fall off the horse. And regardless of what our belief system is or where we live.

One of the great joys of reading this book is how Alan describes growing up and being part of a loving and caring family. To me one of the great thrills of life is its ordinariness. Ordinary people going about their ordinary lives no matter where they life. Alan remembers, writes and talks about daily life and the season's rhythms with love, laughter and fondness. He shares stories about his mother's cooking, food, sharing a bedroom with his brother and a bathroom with his sisters, playing with friends, working hard during summer, music and girls from both sides of the bridge. He doesn't forget the lessons often challenging he has learnt along the way for example, how to deal with tough guys.

There are many things I was surprised about and really like in this book. For example, the way Alan wrote the dialogue and his discussion on religion. In a post published this week on his webpage Alan wrote about how difficult it was to write dialogue. Newfoundlanders do speak their own form of unique English but, it is English and not some quaint version created by foreign writers in fiction and non fiction. The description of unique words at the end described one of the Newfoundland words I have never really understood, the word b'y.

When I started to read the book I wanted to find out about his life in music and Great Big Sea. However, the part I loved the most was the chapter about the role religion played in his life, his family, community life and his music and song writing. The interviews I have managed to hear seem to focus on cod fishing and music and skirt around the issue of faith which for some interviewers seems difficult to talk about. He wrote about his religious experiences in an interesting, honest and accessible way for those who are not practicing. Religious experiences are really diverse within the family and community of Petty Harbour. Religion encouraged Alan to ask as many questions as it answers. (I come from a never practicing Anglican background. I have only been to a church service once, although I go to church at Easter and Christmas, an Anglican one to say thank you to the powers that be or God if you prefer for keeping me and my family safe).

One of the things I love about reading a book about someone else’s childhood and teenage years is the ability to make us drift back to our own. We revisit the good and the not so good and identify what was different and similar from when we were growing up. Music is one of things that we seem to be able to share across continents and cultures. I was interested to read Alan Doyle (and Bob Hallett’s in his book Writing Out The Notes) interests in music during their teenage years. While there was a local and traditional Newfoundland music happening many international acts including AC/DC and the Little River Band influenced them. They had their origins in urban Australia. When I was a teenager we would hear about Australian bands making it in America and we really didn’t think much about it. Until I read Alan and Bob’s books recently I didn’t realise just how huge these bands really were to find their way into the lives of teenagers in Newfoundland and Petty Harbour, Canada without the publicity machines of today.

For those of you who follow Russell Crowe, Scott Grimes and Alan Doyle on Twitter you would have heard Scott Grimes referred to affectionately as a Nitzy Pumpkin. I won’t spoil the story for you by telling you what a Nitzy Pumpkin means as it is explained beautifully in the book. So you will have to read Where I Belong to find out.

Finally, I love this segment I read in the book and reprinted in a national Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail called “A hot, buttered slice of fond memories from Alan Doyle” about the conversation between a mother and a grown son about how to make home-made bread that was a staple at so many meals the family had together. There is a lovely black and white picture of Mrs Doyle making bread in her kitchen in St Johns.

I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.

From Where I Belong by Alan Doyle with Jean Doyle.

How to make my mother’s bread

Alan Doyle: How do you make a loaf of bread, Mom?
Jean Doyle: Alan, honey, I don’t know how to make a loaf of bread. I only knows how to make eight.
Alan: Mom, I’m trying to put your recipe in my book. Can you help me out? What ingredients do you use?
Jean: I use a bag of flour.
Alan: A whole bag?
Jean: A seven-pound bag. And about a cup of butter. And some salt in the palm of my hand.
Alan: Some salt in the palm of your hand?
Jean: Yes. Just some salt in the palm of my hand. I mix it all up, dry.
Alan: In a bowl?
Jean: In the pan I’m making the bread in. Then, I make like a hole in the centre of the flour, the flour and the butter and the salt that I just mixed up. In the hole there, I put in two tablespoons of dry yeast and two tablespoons of sugar.
Alan: Sugar?
Jean: Got to have the sugar for the yeast to rise.
Alan: I didn’t know.
Jean: And then, what I do is use the whisk and just pour in the water.
Alan: How much water?
Jean: I don’t know. It’s about … I’d say probably seven or eight cups. And you got to get the feel of it. I pour in the water and I whisk it. And then when it gets too heavy for the whisk, I get my hands in there. I whack it.
Alan: You whack it.
Jean: Yes. And I knead it, until I gets it right nice and doughy. And then I make it into a ball in my pan and put some butter on it and cover it over and let it rise until it’s double what I had when I started. And then I knead it down again – well, I do, but some people don’t knead it down a second time. After, when it rises up again, I put the dough in the pans. This batch will make eight loaves.
Alan: How long do you cook it for?
Jean: I cook it at 415 degrees for 30 minutes. And take it out and then I brushes it with a bit of butter. And yummy.
Alan: You make it sound so easy.
Jean: Oh, it is.


Excerpted from Where I Belong: From Small Town to Great Big Sea, by Alan Doyle. Copyright ©2014 Skinner’s Hill Music Ltd. Published by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved. Excerpted from Where I Belong: From Small Town to Great Big Sea, by Alan Doyle. Copyright ©2014 Skinner’s Hill Music Ltd. Published by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.