Burridge Unbound
Alan Cumyn
Burridge Unbound by Alan Cumyn is an acclaimed literary masterpiece celebrating major critical honors and timeless storytelling.
Read Time: ~6.1 hr
A Student of Weather
by Elizabeth Hay (2000)
About this book
*A Student of Weather* is the brilliant first novel by acclaimed storywriter, Elizabeth Hay. It tells the story of the rivalry between two contrasting sisters and of a stranger who changes both of their lives forever. Spanning thirty years, it opens in the Prairie Dust Bowl of the 1930s and, later, in the decades following the war, moves back and forth between Ottawa and New York City. Maurice Dove is a visitor to the Saskatchewan farm of widower Ernest Hardy. The relationship he forms with Hardy's daughters—the beautiful, virtuous Lucinda and the dark, intelligent, younger Norma-Joyce—gives rise to an act of betrayal that throws into relief the deep-rooted enmity between them. Norma-Joyce's life, from the time she is eight, is fueled by her obsessive (and unrequited) love for Maurice Dove. Later, in pursuing her life as an artist, she makes discoveries about her past that bring the story full-circle. Hay's evocation of place is palpable, vivid; her characters at once eccentric and familiar. Norma-Joyce, once a strange, dark, self-possessed child, becomes a woman who learns something about self-forgiveness and of the redemptive power of art. Hay's writing is spare, richly textured, dark and erotic. The physical and emotional landscapes she portrays evoke tragic and comic surprises, and remind us about the lasting imprint of first love.
Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraContemporary
Protagonist / CoreNotable Characters
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A Secret Between Us
Daniel Poliquin
"When young Lusignan sets off from Ottawa to the First World War with the Pricess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, he has already survived a tragicomic Catholic childhood and a writing career that has brought him both acclaim and disgrace. Shortly before the men depart for Europe, Lusignan has an encounter with a fellow officer, the aristocratic Essiambre d'Argenteuil, that proves to be the defining moment of his life. Returning from Europe a hollow man, Lusignan keeps the memory alive by shadowing Amalia Driscoll, a woman whose strait-laced proprieties were challenged by this same d'Argenteuil. He encounters Concorde, the untutored young maid struggling to get by in the Flats district of Ottawa, and the Capuchin monk Father Mathrun, who longs for martyrdom in a foreign land. Providing the backdrop to Poliquin's incisive character study is a vivid evocation of a pivotal era in Canadian history." --pub. desc.