Mind Picker: Our Homesick Songs

There was a mermaid, said Finn.

Yes, said Cora. She pulled an old towel up over her, a blanket.

Out on the dark green night water, said Finn, there was a mermaid. And, because mermaids need to, it sang. Sad songs, homesick songs. Night after night, over a hundred thousand fish. And the only one who could hear it was a girl.

Lonely, said Cora.

Yes, a lonely girl, said Finn. Orphaned. But tying knots and listening to the mermaid sing made her feel a bit better. All through the night, she'd lie awake and knot and listen to the songs.

I was in just the right mood for Our Homesick Songs – it's an atmospheric and quirky tale, yet like the iceberg on the cover of my edition, there's plenty lurking under the surface, too – and as much as I enjoyed reading it in the moment, I don't know if it will stay with me for long. Even so, there's a time for just this type of read and I'm pleased that Emma Hooper's Giller Prize longlisting led me to pick this one up just now.

All songs are homesick songs, Finn.

Even the happy ones?

Especially the happy ones.

The story is split into two timelines: The “present” of 1992/93 and the past of the 1970s. In the present we meet Cora, fourteen, and her younger brother, Finn, who is eleven. They are being raised in a tiny fishing community on a small island off Newfoundland, and despite the generations-long stability that the fishing industry has afforded to Big Running, the cod stocks have suddenly collapsed, the province of Newfoundland has declared a Cod Moratorium, and folks are being offered resettlement packages to move to more viable towns. As the neighbours dwindle to just a handful, even Cora and Finn's parents are forced to go away to work, each of them flying out to Fort Mac for a month at a time while the other stays home with the kids. Art and music and storytelling help Cora and Finn to stay connected to the community that they see disappearing around them, and their favourite story of all is that of how their parents met: a magical fairytale full of singing mermaids, an ocean shining with silver fishes, and words of love woven into fishing nets (this love story being the storyline from the past). The writing is a bit fey and simplistic, but for the most part, I could roll with that: whether we're following Aidan and Martha in the past or Finn and Cora in the present, we're seeing the world through the points-of-view of adolescents; a time when a single kiss can change your life; a time when there's homey comfort in icy salt-spray and boot-sucking bog. And as I have mentioned before, I am a fan of long and repetitious paragraph-length sentences:

First the lightning, then the thunder, then the wind and the waves, the waves and the wind and the night-white water, all of which were the same, all one, pushing and reaching and pulling and pressing in on them, on every side, wind, waves, water, everything wet and loud and black and white, deep night, then light, and everyone was awake now, Aidan's mouth moving like talking but just the sound of the wind and the waves and the water, just a moving mouth, only visible when the light hit, then gone again, his arms up and grabbing things, something, a snake, a rope, just a rope, Martha stepping out, towards him, black white, the wind grabbing her hair, punching her back, deep, heavy against her gut, and something, something else, on her arm, pulling her back, a hand in unison with the wind, pulling her, sudden, and she fell back, away from Aidan and back inside and the hatch banged shut. No, said Molly's mouth, in lightning flashes, full of the sound of the wind. No.

Maybe not to everyone's taste, but it works for me. Here's my small complaint: Emma Hooper isn't actually from Newfoundland (“born and raised in Alberta” sounds about as far from “son of a fisherman” as possible), and although she seems to get the colour right – there are cèilidhs with bodhráns, decaying drying flakes, and gifts of jarred seal meat – and although all of us might know a homesick song for a lost place, there's something very particular about Newfoundland writing that wasn't quite present here. (In an otherwise positive review, The Toronto Star says this book “is like a come-from-away version of the island, celebrating its charm but not necessarily steeped in the salty brine of island culture”.) Even so, I was thoroughly enchanted by the characters here – and particularly by Finn's innocence and efforts to lure the cod back so his family could be together again – and the story ended beautifully, so I don't feel like being harsh today. Four stars is a rounding up.