Saints of Big Harbour – Family and Community
Monday Reads Update
Feb 13, 2023
My reading is hectic these days, so I haven’t kept up this blog during the last two weeks. It feels like I am making progress, but I am reading several books at a time, so my focus is a bit scattered.
At the time of this post, I have read over the 50% mark of Saints of Big Harbour by Lynn Coady. Reading a book set in a small town in Nova Scotia, Canada, I somehow get a sense of the land in the unspoken words in the book. The story follows young Guy as he is growing up with his mother and uncle. His uncle wants Guy to be someone, a man who cannot be looked down on so gets onto the hockey team. Guy has aspirations to leave his hometown to attend school in the larger community and accomplish what his uncle is unable to do.
Sometimes a person is unable to adapt to changes and demands a society requires. Contemporary life means being able to fit into an urban lifestyle that challenges many when they try to make a place for themselves in the community and to contribute meaningfully when the way cities are designed to encourage space and separation from friends and neighbours. The space and separation while also living in close proximity to a large population of other human beings means having to care and worry about differences, even when there is an impulse to only look after oneself, or those in the immediate family because of capitalism and competition for resources. Further study is needed that will require a trip to Atlantic Canada in the near future.
- Certain Dark Things
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Count Zero
By William Gibson - The Death of Vivek Oji
By Akwaeke Emezi - The Book of Night Women
By Marlon James - Legendborn
By Tracy Deonn - The Sleepwalker
By Christopher Clark - Six Suspects
By Vikas Swarup - Trail of Lightning
By Rebecca Roanhorse - Cloud Altas
By David Mitchell - Saints of Big Harbour
By Lynn Coady