Snow Road Station - by Elizabeth Hay (Hardcover)

About the Book

"From the Giller Prize-winning author comes a novel, witty and wise, about thwarted ambition, unrealized dreams, the enduring bonds of female friendship, and love's capacity to surprise us at any age. In the winter of 2008, as snow falls without interruption, an actor in a Beckett play can't remember her lines. Fleeing the theatre, she beats a retreat into her past and arrives at Snow Road Station, a barely discernible dot on the map of Ontario. The actor is Lulu Blake, in her sixties now, a sexy, seemingly unfooled older woman well-versed in taking risks. Out of work and humiliated, she enters the last act of her life wondering what she can make of this diminished thing. In Snow Road Station she decides she is through with drama, but as it turns out, drama isn't through with her. She thinks she wants peace. It turns out she wants more. Looming in the background is that autumn's global financial meltdown, while in the foreground a cast of returning characters from His Whole Life animates a round of weddings, sap harvests, love affairs, and family turmoil. At the centre of it all is a friendship between Lulu and Nan. As the two women contemplate growing old together they surrender old ambitions and dreams, confronting the limits of the choices they made and the messy feelings that kept them apart for decades."--

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the Giller Prize-winning author comes a novel, witty and wise, about thwarted ambition, unrealized dreams, the enduring bonds of female friendship, and love's capacity to surprise us at any age.

"Joyous and lyrical." --Mary Lawson
"[In Snow Road Station, ] Hay makes a case for the simplicity of pleasure." --The New Yorker

In the winter of 2008, as snow falls without interruption, an actor in a Beckett play blanks on her lines. Fleeing the theatre, she beats a retreat into her past and arrives at Snow Road Station, a barely discernible dot on the map of Ontario.

The actor is Lulu Blake, in her sixties now, a sexy, seemingly unfooled woman well-versed in taking risks. Out of work, humiliated, she enters the last act of her life wondering what she can make of her diminished self. In Snow Road Station she decides she is through with drama, but drama, it turns out, isn't through with her. She thinks she wants peace. It turns out she wants more.

Looming in the background is that autumn's global financial meltdown, while in the foreground family and friends animate a round of weddings, sap harvests, love affairs, and personal turmoil. At the centre of it all is the lifelong friendship between Lulu and Nan. As the two women contemplate growing old, they surrender certain hard-held dreams and confront the limits of the choices they've made and the messy feelings that kept them apart for decades.

Review Quotes

"At the center of this sensitive novel, set in Ontario in 2008, is Lulu, a middle-aged actress who has returned to the hamlet of her youth for her nephew's wedding. . . . Hay makes a case for the simplicity of pleasure: 'All you have to do," Lulu thinks, "is put yourself in the way of beauty, put yourself into the incredible swing of it.'" --The New Yorker

"A moving novel about ageing and transformation. . . . Snow Road Station amazed me." --Peterborough Examiner

"Joyous and lyrical, Snow Road Station is an ode to the North, in fact an ode to life itself, and all its possibilities." --Mary Lawson, bestselling author of A Town Called Solace

"Snow Road Station is an exquisitely etched coming-of-middle-age story. With a touch by turns subtle and sensual, Elizabeth Hay explores the surprising differences--and crucial overlaps--between what we think makes us happy, and what actually does. Along the way, we are drawn imperceptibly into intimacy with characters who reckon with the past in order to remake their own--and perhaps the reader's--notions of what family is." --Ann-Marie MacDonald, author of the #1 bestselling Fayne

"Like Elizabeth Strout with Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, Hay has created a fictional world to which she returns, to great effect. Both His Whole Life and Snow Road Station stand on their own, but there's real pleasure in reading them consecutively and re-encountering the characters at later stages of their lives--and in different lights." --The Literary Review of Canada

"In this charming, engaging and eloquent novel, Lulu takes centre stage. . . . Like all of Hay's previous novels, Snow Road Station is a gift to be cherished." --Winnipeg Free Press

About the Author

ELIZABETH HAY is the Giller Prize-winning author of six novels, including Late Nights on Air, His Whole Life, and A Student of Weather. Her memoir All Things Consoled won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction; her story collection Small Change was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. A former radio broadcaster, she spent a number of years in Mexico and New York City, and makes her home in Ottawa.