Barnacle Love
Anthony De Sa
(published by Doubleday Canada)
View Anthony De Sa's video
What the judges said:
"From a remote, sun-dappled Portuguese village, to the rugged shores of Newfoundland, to the colourful back alleys of Toronto's little Portugal, Anthony Da Sa takes us on an enthralling transatlantic journey. Lush poetic prose, richly-drawn characters and a mythic quality meld in three intersecting stories about an immigrant father and his Canadian-born son. Themes of cultural displacement, intergenerational tension and the sometimes suffocating bonds of family are woven into a vivid, multi-layered narrative. Haunting and sensual, Barnacle Love is an auspicious and unforgettable debut."
At the heart of Barnacle Love is the relationship between a father and his son. Manuel Rebelo, has tried to escape the smallness of his Portuguese village, but embracing his adopted land is not as simple as he had hoped.
Manuel's son, Antonio, is born into Toronto's little Portugal, a world of colourful houses and labyrinthine alleys. In the Rebelo home the church looms large, men and women inhabit divided space, and a family lives in the shadow cast by a father's failures.
Anthony De Sa
(photo by Laura Bombier)
Anthony De Sa grew up in Toronto's Portuguese community. He heads the English department and directs the creative writing program at a high school for the arts. Barnacle Love, shortlisted for the 2008 Giller Award, is his first book and he is currently at work on a novel. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three sons.
Excerpt from Barnacle Love
"If you feet no sit right on pedals, even little wrong, you can lose balance, fall and hurt yourself."
With my left properly placed on the pedal, I skipped with my right foot and hopped onto the padded banana seat.
"Okay-you is okay." I could hear my father encouraging me.
I could hear his urging: "Balance! . . . Balance! No hurt yourself!" His fading voice mixed with the warm wind humming in my ears.
I was six then. As I grew older I ventured further, past Senhora Rosa's variety store where coloured balls and blinking dolls wrapped in cellophane dangled from invisible strings tacked to the yellowed ceiling. Everything twisted and twirled every time I made my way into the store, pushing the large "Coke" handle and tripping the familiar chime. I pedalled to the clicking of coloured straws that covered my spokes, all the way to the top of our street to the synagogue, "da church for Jewish peoples," and onto Dundas Street with the blur of the Red Rockets. That's where I stopped.
By the age of seven, Palmerston, Markham, and Euclid Avenue all bored me. Manny had coined it "Name That House!" I'd call out a number and he would tell me the colour of its brick: pink, blue, or lime green. For some, we were even able to name who lived there.
"86 Euclid?" I'd shout.
"Yellow with green porch, aluminum awning, Mr. Almeida by himself, breeds canaries." A slight pause then, "Cheesy fingers-Rothmans!"
Manny was amazing. He had it right down to the brand.
When things got that predictable we moved on to new adventures, to the backs of our houses. I pedalled through the intricate labyrinth of laneways, with their crooked garage roofs, dark gurgling gutters and tangled clotheslines. We would ride our bikes across the cracked and uneven concrete, dodging sewer grates and peeling out from gravel patches. Some nooks in the laneways had been good places to dump garbage: old shoes, a wedding dress, shopping carts, a wig, worn tires.
By age ten I knew everything about where I lived, every picket and dented door, the pitch of every mother's call when the streetlights came on and we scurried onto our verandas and then into our dimly lit homes like ants disappearing into sand holes. After a storm, I knew how the water ran from the garage spouts toward the centre of our lane, how these small murky streams would meet and mix with spots of gasoline that dotted our laneway. Once together the colourful blue and violet film would swirl and gather before picking up speed and dumping itself into the storm sewer. We used to enjoy racing twigs or cigarette butts, anything that could float. We'd squat at the top of these alley creeks, name our men, and then drop them into the speeding rivulet. We'd run alongside, cheering.
I felt safe growing up. I was comforted by what I knew, what was familiar.
Page 143-145
Read the Committee's comments on the other shortlisted books.
2009 shortlist:
