Hold Fast is a novel surrounded by death. It begins with the burial of Michael's parents, who have been killed in a car crash involving a drunken driver, and ends with his grandfather's death in sickness and old age. In between, we have the struggle of a fourteen-year-old boy to maintain his identity in a world of harshness, ignorance, and insensitivity. (p. 81)

Hold Fast is divided into three sections, each of which contains the motif of escape and return to reality by the hero. The first escape is simply a brief but meaningful run to the seashore during the burial of his parents; the second, also brief, is a running away from the circumstances concerning Michael's fight with a classmate. The third escape, more elaborate and adventurous, is a kind of initiation rite into young manhood and an assertion of pride in his heritage when he "borrows" a car and survives by his wits for two wintry days in the washroom of a deserted campsite. These three escapes have considerable character-building power and when Michael is faced with his grandfather's death, there is no running away: "In the cemetery I watched the casket go into the ground, and never once did I move from the spot where I stood."

Probably what one notices most readily about this novel is the style of the hero-narrator. His colourful, earthy, rhythmic idiom may jar at first, but then it settles into warm, colloquial undulation…. The diction is salted with four-letter words too well known to fourteen-year-olds but there is an occasional arresting phrase which rolls out of the narrator just as naturally: "Downstairs, me and Brent walked in on a kitchenful of miserable silence." One wishes there were more of these.

A definite weakness in the novel is Kevin Major's delineation of adults. Admittedly, there is always a difficulty in portraying adults in children's books. Either they come off as weak, flat characters as in E. Nesbit's The Treasure Seekers or they are merely absent for the better part of the action as in Arthur Ransome's We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea. Quite obviously, Mr. Major sees adults in Hold Fast as symbolic destroyers of freedom and naturalness in human relations—qualities of life that are so precious to Michael. Whether it is the busdriver, the official at the airport, the principal or Uncle Ted, Michael must face a world of repression and red tape totally foreign to his upbringing. The only adult who can communicate with Michael is his grandfather, but they share only brief memories before being separated at the beginning. Yet, it is surely a falsification of reality—in this most realistic of novels—to view adults as a predictable series of Uncle Teds.

In spite of this stereotyping, the novel does work—and work admirably. Kevin Major, according to the note on the dust jacket, would have us believe that his novel "is a plea for us Newfoundlanders to be like certain of the species of seaweed that inhabit our shores, which, when faced with the threat of being destroyed by forces they cannot control, evolve an appendage to hold them to the rocks, a holdfast."

The message is not just for Newfoundlanders. The values emphasized here are some of the most significant and universal: pride in oneself and one's heritage, courage to express and hold to one's opinions, the necessity to find a balance between emotion and reason and to cultivate a fine sensitivity for others and absolute honesty in assessing social relations.

Hold Fast may be a novel surrounded by death, but it pulses with an unbounded love of life which is attractive and meaningful. (pp. 82-3)