House of Hate

The destructive hatred a family can turn upon itself is the theme of this powerful work, which has, in the words of Margaret Laurence, become "a classic of its kind." Set in the stark, confining atmosphere of a Newfoundland mill town, this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of the Stone family-caught in relentless poverty and tyrannized by Saul Stone, an illiterate man whose primitive fury warps and twists his wife and children. A brilliant portrayal of existence bereft of tenderness, House of Hate is a tale of human ordeal and of an anguished striving for love in the midst of bitterness. It is, as Farley Mowat has observed, "a book unique in Canadian Literature."