Great Big Sea singer offers Chicken Soup for the COVID-19 soul in new memoir
Posted December 6, 2020 10:12 am.
Last Updated December 6, 2020 10:23 am.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Imagine a night out with friends, where everyone is trading their best stories, with each tale better than the last. That’s the idea behind All Together Now: A Newfoundlander’s Light Tales for Heavy Times, the third and latest memoir from Alan Doyle.
LISTEN: All Together Now
“It’s not the kind of thing that has to be read cover-to-cover. I’m just really happy if it brings a smile to people’s face. That’s enough for me.” – @alanthomasdoyle, author of All Together Now: A Newfoundlander’s Light Tales for Heavy Times, from @doubledayca. #1130bookshelf https://t.co/SPxu5yhEOx
— John Ackermann ???? (@jackermann) December 6, 2020
Doyle says the concept came to him early in the pandemic as a way to simulate the kind of gathering made impossible by COVID-19 restrictions.
“Late in April, the publisher came to me and said, ‘Look, we’d really love to put a title out from you this fall’ and I explained to them the idea of a virtual kind of night in the pub in a storybook form,” he explains.
The book taps into Doyle’s Newfoundland roots.
“We’re from an oral tradition here. Most, especially even more isolated rural Newfoundland places, they didn’t have a local paper and they didn’t have a library or a local radio station. They recorded their history in songs and in stories and in poems and recitations.”
“[The publisher] loved the idea so I wrote the thing in about three weeks and sent it in.”
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There are 16 tales in all, covering everything from growing up in the small town of Petty Harbour to life on the road with his band, folk-rockers Great Big Sea.
“It’s the kind of book that you can pick up and read a story and lay it down and come back to it later if you want,” he admits.
“It’s not the kind of thing that has to be read cover-to-cover. I’m just really happy if it brings a smile to people’s face. That’s enough for me.”
Look for All Together Now: A Newfoundlander’s Light Tales for Heavy Times from Doubleday Canada.
