Far from Shore is the story of what happens to a family when the work gives out. It's also the story of Chris, who, despite his strong Newfoundland speech, could be a teen-aged boy anywhere yearning for the security of a solid home, awkwardly pursuing the excitement of sex, stabbing at the adventure and responsibility of manhood. It begins on Christmas Eve when Father stumbles home drunk and crashes into the Christmas tree. (p. 21) Over the next couple of months things get worse until finally Father ...

Hold Fast is a novel surrounded by death. It begins with the burial of Michael's parents, who have been killed in a car crash involving a drunken driver, and ends with his grandfather's death in sickness and old age. In between, we have the struggle of a fourteen-year-old boy to maintain his identity in a world of harshness, ignorance, and insensitivity. (p. 81) Hold Fast is divided into three sections, each of which contains the motif of escape and return to reality by the hero. The first esc...

It is, I suppose, decidedly unfair to compare the first novel of a young new writer with the acclaimed classic of a master storyteller, but Kevin Major's Hold Fast brought me so often into remembered contact with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn that a comparison (or at least a referential glossing) became unavoidable. Such a comparison, in fact, tells us much about Major's technique and purpose and, lest the reader be apprehensive on this point, does nothing to devalue this young Newfound...

When Kevin Major's Hold Fast was published three years ago, it was rightly hailed as a milestone in Canadian children's book publishing. Major captured in stark, vivid, detail the violent, troubled life of a Newfoundland teenager. (p. 29) We approached [Major's second novel. Far From Shore] with some trepidation, knowing that second novels can often be disappointing. However, we were not disappointed. Far From Shore is in many ways similar to Hold Fast. Set in Newfoundland, it is the st...

There aren't many novels that connect a commercial American style and the special qualities of a Canadian region, but Kevin Major's first book, Hold Fast …, does just that. It brings together the current mode of "young adult" novel as developed in the United States and the longings of Newfoundlanders for their past. In this sense it's a unique product of recent Canadian literature…. Newfoundlanders realize that, spiritually, all that they possess is the tradi...

For those who like to think that family life is still more or less as it was on Leave It to Beaver, Far From Shore hits hard and low. For others, weary of the sensationalism of juvenile novels, Kevin Major's story is a brave look at how a tough period can harden a boy like a nut. The pressures on the Slade family are like a vise gripping a migraine. Some (as in Major's last novel, Hold Fast) come from the frustrations of life in a small Newfoundland outport—boredom, unemployment, a gene...

Set in Newfoundland like last year's Hold Fast, this weaker novel [Far From Shore] also deals with a basically likable but undisciplined kid in trouble. In a family where his unemployed father has become a surly drunk and his high-achieving sister, bound for University, is forever "at" her Dad—till he hauls off and hits her one on a disastrous Christmas—Chris flunks ninth grade, starts hanging out with a no-good older crowd, and gets in trouble with police over an episode ...

At 14 kids need to look outside the small world of home and family to fix their bearings on their own independence and individuality. Literature can provide such a reading. Adolescents recognize in their fictional counterparts the same irretrievable loss of childhood, the inevitability of adulthood, and the paradox of being in both places at one time. Sometimes it is enough to "hold fast," a discovery made by Michael, a young Canadian from the fishing village of Marten, Newfoundland, in [Hold ...

The strength of Far From Shore lies in the author's ability to present each of the major characters sympathetically in spite of their shortcomings. Through the device of interior monologue, actions and attitudes are provided with an emotional frame of reference that makes them comprehensible. (p. 52) Major's use of dialogue is particularly admirable both as a means of projecting character and as a device for conveying regional flavour. He catches the rhythms of Newfoundland speech without the ...

[In Hold Fast, fourteen-year-old] Michael, orphaned along with his seven-year-old brother Brent when his parents are killed by a drunken driver, tries to grapple with the changes in his life. The Newfoundland idiom [in which he speaks] soon becomes as natural as Michael himself as he recounts his move from Marten, his fishing village, to live with relatives in distant St. Albert. While Michael's relationship with straight-arrow cousin Curtis slowly solidifies, he is hard put to accept his uncle...

[The critically acclaimed novel Hold Fast] is set in Newfoundland where the author lives. The dialect of the main characters, the details of life in a small fishing village, the path of the runaways—all these factors place the story solidly there. This in itself makes the novel unusual, certainly attractive to Canadians and to others interested in Newfoundland. The fact that the story is exciting and in every way appealing, particularly to teenagers, should cause it to be received by a very wide audi...

Kevin Major's Far From Shore is a commendable example of writing pared to the essentials in character development, dialogue, plot and interpretation. The narrative technique and the skilful description of Newfoundlanders are equally praiseworthy. As he did in his award-winning Hold Fast …, Major depicts not only a Newfoundland adolescent, but also the universal adolescent, the strength and fragility of youth caught up in the immediacy of life.