A master of atmosphere, in Snow Road Station Elizabeth Hay turns her attention to a rural Ontario town and a family of maple syrup farmers who all hide their own sticky secrets and hidden desires.
“Snow was a man. The road was named after its surveyor, not the weather, a fact that disappointed at first, until the idea of it became more tolerable, or at least inevitable, and the name’s meaning expanded all over again. Snow Road Station was an arrival, a departure, a long wait—a place of rest, a stoppage, yet a road.”
“Snow Road Station is a gentle, quiet book that steps back, elevates setting, and allows its characters to breathe and deepen.”
Aging actress Lulu Blake has had maybe the worst performance of her life onstage in her newest play. Embarrassed and seeking a life reevaluation she disappears to her hometown for a wedding off-the-grid. Once there, she’s swept up into the past—old loves reappear, neglected friendships rekindle, and her heart discovers there are always new men, new diversions and unfortunately new abuses to experience in the sunset of her life. Amidst the sap running, these relationships and their various dysfunctions and intricacies come to a head, as past grievances surge up and revelations overflow.
“A man’s character changes and he becomes himself. Lulu had read that somewhere, surprised by the turn of thought. Not that he changes and becomes someone else. He becomes the person he’s meant to be. What would it take? she wondered. Becoming who you’re meant to be, instead of turning into a major disappointment.”
Snow Road Station is a gentle, quiet book that steps back, elevates setting, and allows its characters to breathe and deepen. Plot is secondary to the lush lyrical writing and the beauty of a life lived, messy in its mistakes and joys, too. Hay posits that age should have no bearing on ambition or rediscovering ourselves. We can always be primed and ready for reinvention.
“All you have to do, she thought, is put yourself in the way of beauty, put yourself into the incredible swing of it. And her mind moved through the whole dance from sap to bud to shade to these days of glory—these extravagant last acts—before the trees lost everything to the wind and the rain, and oncoming winter. Then for months on end they would go naked, crayoned by snow. And then begin again.”
Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird is a mixed-Cree writer, editor and book hoarder. She currently hosts the Nimbus podcast Book Me where she talks local books and interviews authors. She holds a degree in English literature from Dalhousie and her writing has been published in The Coast and CBC among others. She can usually be found relentlessly online at @birdykinsreads. Her first children’s book Snow Day is upcoming at Nimbus for Fall 2024.
- Lindsay Gloade-Raining Birdhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/lindsay-gloade-raining-bird/
- Lindsay Gloade-Raining Birdhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/lindsay-gloade-raining-bird/
- Lindsay Gloade-Raining Birdhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/lindsay-gloade-raining-bird/
ELIZABETH HAY is the Giller Prize-winning author of six novels, including Late Nights on Air, His Whole Life, and A Student of Weather. Her memoir All Things Consoled won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction; her story collection Small Change was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. A former radio broadcaster, she spent a number of years in Mexico and New York City, and makes her home in Ottawa.
- Publisher : Knopf Canada (April 11 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 103900332X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1039003323
