SAINTS OF BIG HARBOUR

Award-winning Canadian author Coady’s US debut tells intertwined stories of unhappy adolescents—and unhappier adults—as their lives collide in Nova Scotia in the early 1980s.

Guy Boucher lives with his struggling-to-make-ends-meet mother, his older and mostly absent sister, and his all-too-present uncle Isadore in a rural French Canadian community outside the town of Big Harbour. Guy’s home life is a disaster. Isadore is an alcoholic bully whose new drinking pal is Guy’s English teacher, an American draft dodger. (Heavy drinking by the men here is a given and depressing constant except when they’re up at the monastery drying out.) At a dance in Big Harbour, where the Scots look down on the French, Guy meets a town girl, Corrine, who lets him dance with her five times. He pursues her with puppylike optimism, not quite picking up on her lack of interest, let alone disdain. In fact, Corrine has her own problems. Although pretty and popular, she has concocted an elaborate fantasy life complete with an older boyfriend to impress her peers, especially her sensitive, less popular friend Pam. Pam, distressed already by her father’s descent into alcoholism and joblessness, is distraught for Corrine, especially after she makes Guy sound like an obsessed stalker. Pam passes her fears for Corrine on to the even less popular, more desperate Ann. After Ann tells the gossip about Corrine to her brother, who happens to be attempting a friendship with Corrine’s own seriously troubled brother, the former high school golden boys go on a vengeful, indiscriminate rampage. Meanwhile, Guy’s mother moves with him into town to escape Isadore. Officially suspected though not exactly charged with molesting Corrine, Guy hides out with his now sober English teacher until the truth wins out.

Rich and spicy, but an iffy plot and a little thick and slow to boil.