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  • The Wreckage

  • Written by: Michael Crummey
  • Narrated by: Mary Lewis
  • Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (73 ratings)

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The Wreckage

Written by: Michael Crummey
Narrated by: Mary Lewis
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Publisher's Summary

From the award-winning author of River Thieves comes a sweeping novel of love crossed by the blindness of faith and fate.

In a remote Newfoundland outpost at the onset of the Second World War, the young Catholic Wish Furey meets the passionate, independent 16-year-old Protestant Sadie Parsons. They begin an intense affair that is cut short as prejudice and mistrust drive Wish away, into the British Army and the war. At home in Newfoundland, Sadie turns her back on her family and moves to St. John's to wait for Wish - until she receives word that he is dead. 

Fifty years later, Sadie returns to Newfoundland to scatter her American husband's ashes and to face her past - one that will come to meet her as she never imagined. 

Masterfully crafted, The Wreckage is both compulsively readable and a penetrating study of the reach and limits of love, the depths of human hatred, and the ultimate impossibility of knowing another or oneself.

A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
National Best Seller
Nominee, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2005 

©2009 Michael Crummey (P)2019 Doubleday Canada

What the critics say

2005, Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, Nominated

2006, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Nominated

“Heroically human. . . . Crummey offers a journey of stimulating moral inquiry, one of his fiction’s most admirable qualities.” (The Globe and Mail)

“Extraordinary. . . . [Crummey] explores human nature, charting the moral choices of his characters without passing judgment. . . . [His] gift is to write with compassion, imbuing relationships with complexity and depth. He doesn’t make anything simple - or simplistic. The Wreckage shows with profound insight that nothing’s fair in love and war.” (National Post

What listeners say about The Wreckage

Average Customer Ratings
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    3 out of 5 stars

Great performance

The performance is exceptional but the story was brutal and the end was an odd combination of tragedy and success. Not for the faint of heart.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant

I have an affection for Newfoundland for many reasons. Everything about this book resonated within my heart. I just finished listening to this beautiful story. I learned things from a new perspective. The word that comes to mind is a hoolahoop. You are stretched to the outer limits and brought back again. I'm fulfilled and hopeful once again. Life truely is a "circle game"

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Dark and powerful

I loved the beginning of this book but found the middle hard to listen to - very graphic wartime violence. Not as good as Crummey’s The Innocents or Sweetland. The narration was choppy at times, but kudos to the narrator for all the accents.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Canadian winner

My only complaint is that I think there should be a slightly longer pause to make a definite change between time and place in the narration

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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my opinion

very much enjoyed it. taking my mind to different places and the history of the times

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Five Star Plus

This work of literary fiction is a masterpiece in the complexity of its subject matter and the emotional depth of Mercedes and Wish, separated early on with little hope of reuniting. The multi-tiered plot keeps the reader in suspense right to the end, waiting and hoping that something will be salvaged from the 'wreckage' scattered throughout their lifetimes.

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really great

A reinvented cliché, but always good for the heart to hear once in a while.

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