Fans of the Toronto poet, non-fiction writer, and all-round wit David McFadden have become familiar with his trademark travel-narrative style through his previous books An Innocent in Scotland and An Innocent in Ireland. McFadden now adds a third book to his “innocent” series, via his look at the friendly folk and welcoming landscapes he encounters on a tour of Newfoundland.

A writer who always keeps both ears and eyes open – the better to hear all manner of snappy dialogue and clever expressions, while observing the physical particulars of both people and place – McFadden peppers his writing with a rapid-fire series of anecdotes of the Newfoundlanders he meets. These include a lesbian bartender (who complains that life isn’t easy for her there), a “menacing” young Englishman, and a male nurse who smokes and drinks (and who wants to assure McFadden that he’s not gay). And that’s all in the space of just two pages. As might be expected, a large part of McFadden’s narrative takes place in and around places where people in Newfoundland like to drink.

Throughout it all, McFadden never forgets – or, perhaps more accurately, is never allowed to forget – that he’s from Toronto, and that sense of foreignness pervades his tales. It might be more apt to change the “Innocent” in the book’s title to “Torontonian,” since most of the people McFadden meets, and places and things he sees, only serve to reinforce the idea that things are a lot different in Newfoundland than in his bustling home city. It’s a point that McFadden makes more than a few times, and always in an entertaining way. Whether or not readers will tire of this habit is a matter of how appealing one finds his conversations with the locals.

Still, McFadden gets top marks for avoiding the easy sentimentality and quick generalizations that are often the downfall of books like these. Here you actually get the sense that McFadden’s talking to – and about – real people, not simply the “local types” and “colourful characters” that sometimes populate travel books.