Cape Breton's Magazine

'Miner Novel a Major Success''-TheCapeBretoriPost from THE NEW NOVEL: The Glace Bay Miners' Museum by Sheldon Currie A WONDERFUL NEW NOVEL BY AN IMPORTANT CAPE BRE? TON WRITER! The Glace Bay Miners' Museum features Marga? ret, the main character. Kicked about like a runny-nosed pup, devoted to a grandfather with ruined lungs and a dying lan? guage, protected by her brothers until the mines killed them, loved by Neil until the mines killed him, too • Margaret fields life through a lens shaped by her losses and her loneliness and her powerful roots. When she finally does take control, it is a brave, reasonable, singular and impossible thing that she does. And through her, Currie's fiction achieves an outrageous reality. Here is a selection from Sheldon Currie's marvelous new nov? el • a passionate, compassionate story set in the coal life of Cape Breton Island. Margaret is an indelible new voice in Cana? dian literature. The book is excellent storytelling throughout, with a powerful, shattering ending which no one should reveal. Readers will want to read the novel before they see "Margaret's Museum" • the new movie based on this book. from CHAPTER FIVE • THE CIRCUS AND THE UNION • IT WAS CHARLIE DAVE Iloved and still do, but I think about Ian a lot now. I liked him then and he was good to me too, but it was Charlie Dave that I loved. It's not just that Ian got killed too, and with Neil at that, that my like turned to love, although you do think a lot more about people when they're dead. The thing is I've come to see there was more to Ian than I thought. They were so different, Charlie Dave and Ian, you'd never take them for brothers. They looked alike, I don't mean that. They were different in their heads and their hearts. Like fighting, for instance. Charlie Dave was great. I was kicked around like a yappy dog as it was, I'd hate to think what would of happened if he wouldn't have been around. But I re? member now how it felt like when I went to him and told him somebody did something to me, hit me or stole my kerchief, or my mitts. He was almost glad. Now, I think he was glad and he'd either go right away if it was something stolen and 't it back, he always got it back or he'd get something the same or just as good or better, or he'd wait till he'd meet the person that did it and he'd beat the living shit right out of him. What I mean is, he loved it. He was as quiet a person as you could imagine, and he'd never pick a fight in a million years any more than he would hurt somebody or even an animal for nothing. But give him a reason and he just loved to fight. I think that's why he was so good at it. He just loved it. Ian was altogether different. I don't think Ian liked to fight. I think he hated it. When he was doing it he looked like he was scared he was going to hurt the guy. He beat him just as bad as Charlie Dave, but it was altogether different.... Continued on Page 58 FRONT COVER PHOTOS: International star Helena Bonham Carter and Cape Breton author Sheldon Currie. The movie "Margaret's Museum" is adapted from Currie's new novel The Glace Bay Miners' Museum.