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The Grand Change

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red sneakers in sand long weekendFor Canadians, the Victoria Day long weekend tends to be the unofficial start of summer (whether the weather cooperates with this or not!). Get a jumpstart on your summer reading with these books, all 200 pages or less and perfectly digestible for a relaxing long weekend.

OSable Island Home - Pottersfieldur Sable Island Home by Sharon O’Hara with Mary O’Hara
Pottersfield Press, 176 pages
Our Sable Island Home is a personal story that does not shy away from the perils of life in an isolated locale, interwoven with maritime history that centres around the iconic island. The story will take you on a journey more than sixty years back into the past, to a time when Sable Island was referred to as “the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

Eating Habits of the Chronically Lonesome Megan Gail ColesEating Habits of the Chronically Lonesome by Megan Gail Coles
Killick Press, 200 pages
Eating Habits Of The Chronically Lonesome will leave you struck, yet, exhilarated. The exploration of starvation and consumption is at the core of each character; what does our hunger reveal about the state of our soft hearts?

 

The Grand ChangeThe Grand Change by William Andrews
Acorn Press, 200 pages
William Andrews’ first novel examines life in a small PEI community in the 1940s and ’50s as changes, so common in the rest of the world, begin to take hold. Using a road as an allegory, he weaves a lyrical tale of simple country people, their struggles and their joys.

Beth Powning Home: Chronicle of a North Country Life Goose Lane EditionsHome: Chronicle of a North Country Life by Beth Powning
Goose Lane Editions, 176 pages
After twenty-five years on a New Brunswick farm, award-winning Canadian author Beth Powning came to understand the land she calls home. Now, almost twenty years after the initial publication of Home, readers may once again experience the spirit of home in nature in a new edition of her seminal book.

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Blank white book w/pathWilliam Andrews’ debut novel, The Grand Change, is a quiet rumination on the last days of a rural way of life, before technological advances and modern conveniences would change things forever. Set during the 1940s and ’50s in a small PEI farming community named Hook Road, the first-person story is told by Jake, a young boy being raised by his grandparents. Hook Road is a fictional place, but it’s clear that Andrews is drawing from his own memories with vivid, detailed scenes.

Although there is little tension developed, The Grand Change works well as a document of the time, and Andrews employs a graceful, poetic style that suits the quiet dignity of the day. Emotional moments that could be explored more deeply are glossed over and quickly explained away.

The final chapters and epilogue, which detail how television and tractors essentially killed Hook Road, would perhaps be better suited to a memoir or non-fiction work. But for anyone interested in what life was like on the Island before “the grand change,” this is a worthwhile read.

The Grand Change
by William Andrews
$19.95, paperback, 192 pp.
Acorn Press, October 2013

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