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.