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.
Bringing back a colourful character from His Whole Life, Snow Station Road is the story of Lulu Blake — a talented actress, now in her mid-sixties, having to face the fact that she will never make the big time — and as Lulu returns to her hometown for a wedding, reuniting with old friends and family will force Lulu to consider what sorts of things she sacrificed in her lifelong quest for the acknowledgement and applause of strangers. I haven’t always truly connected with Elizabeth Hay’s novels, despite her admittedly engaging eye for detail and lovely sentences, but I enjoyed this exploration of ageing and ambition and the quest to know oneself very much; as lovely and evocative a piece of Canadiana as a Group of Seven painting or a Gordon Lightfoot song. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
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.
Returning to Snow Road Station (an actual place in rural Ontario, an hour into the bush outside Ottawa) for a wedding allows Lulu to not only reconnect with her best friend Nan (who looks like she has everything figured out) and her brother Guy (who definitely does not), but she also mixes with the younger generation; all struggling to figure themselves out at the beginning of their adulthood. This is a novel of characters, their interactions and conversations, and the plot arc mostly follows Lulu’s soul growth. I admit that that sounds like a quiet novel — and it is — but it may be the only thing worth writing about.
A few random quotes for flavour:
• “If you want to look old,” Nan said, “have a face lift.”
• Canadians think ten dollar bills are purple, Americans think all guns are loaded; and that’s the difference between Canadians and Americans, she thought.
• He seemed a lot younger than thirty-two, but then we’re all twelve years old inside, she thought, some of the time.
And, throughout, the landscape — fields and lakes and sugarbush encircled by winding country roads — as it changes throughout the seasons from snow-covered to leaf to an autumnal blaze of colour, acts as balm and inspiration to Lulu’s thwarted aspirations:
Up on the hilltop the heroes of crimson and orange were baring their chests, stabbing themselves in the heart, tossing fistfuls of coins in the air. Such bravura performances. Such scene stealers. Such hams. 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.
There is much more plot than I’m recording here — Lulu meets men who range from bad to good; there is quite a bit of domestic drama in Nan’s household — and just as the background detail of the 1995 Quebec Referendum didn’t seem quite relevant to the plotline when I read His Whole Life, it seemed a bit immaterial to set Snow Station Road in 2008 and have the briefest of commentary on Obama’s election campaign and the American financial crisis. Still, Lulu’s journey was credible and affecting and I enjoyed the whole thing.
