Wayne Bartlett's Louder Than the Sea is an ice-rimed foray into Newfoundland's outports. A harsh, sharp-eyed, occasionally hilarious novel, it shirks much of the mawkish reverence that plagues so much Atlantic fiction in favour of a style packed with luminous detail and the lilt of Newfoundland speech. Martin Bellman, the youngest son of a family forced to abandon their tiny home port (located on a mere rock known as Sacred Island) and settle in a...