Back in 2006, after a bit of reading up on the cast and characters on CBC Television's new hit "Hatching, Matching and Dispatching", I came across an article about Joel Hynes who plays Nick Crocker, the grave digging, hard drinking, chain smoking boyfriend of Darlene Furey. I have to admit that I was attracted to this bad boy character and curious about his strange fetish for coffin sex. It makes for good laughs for a couple of episodes.This young fella had written a novel that won the Percy Janes First Novel Award in Newfoundland and Labrador. "Down to the Dirt" is in a way to me, a love story. It's a love story with a lot of drinking, swearing and cheating thrown in the mix. The main character, Keith Kavanagh could have been a small-town boy from Muskoka or the Ottawa Valley with all the drinking, smoking and wayward ways. The fact that he was from Newfoundland adds more character and "culture" to the story. It adds humour with the language, grammar and Keith's realization that at one point as he's stealing a flask of whiskey, he is Newfoundland's Acting Ambassador to Nova Scotia. See this URL for a longer review: http://www.ncf.ca/ncf/dg/dgView.jsp?t...
To me this is a love story. Love that is an addiction itself, even without drugs and alcohol that this book has everywhere. I picked up this book to be on the Rock, and I got there not by the descriptive scenery of the ocean air of the Rock, but by the Newfoundland accent of the characters. Other than that this story could be told from anywhere in the world. Story of two kids growing up together in the small town. Drawn to each other by the similar events in their childhood where grown up let them down.
What do You think about Down To The Dirt (2005)?
This was a quick and easy read which gave me some insight into life in Newfoundland today. Since there are few contemporary novelists from this region (read, zero), I thought it was cool to get a peek of the Newfoundlound scene. Hynes does a great job of giving the reader a sense of the apathy and utter hopelessness that Keith and Natasha feel, and I dig that they met when Keith was pissing on Natasha's front lawn. However, by the time they get together, any potential for decent characterization is all gone and the reader is left with a bad-boy loves mildly slutty girl stereotype. Also, the best friend does some narration here, which is interspersed randomly throughout the text and fades away just as randomly. The best writing by far was at the end of the novel. I won't give it away, but it almost, kinda, redeemed the whole thing. Although this was not my favorite it contained some good stuff and was unpretentious. I would give Hynes a second look.
—Tiff
