Literary Atlas of NLThe literature inside the landscapeOpen in Atlas →
Map showing the location of Scene at Downtown St. John's in Newfoundland and Labrador
Open in Atlas

Scene

Scene at Downtown St. John's

from February · by Lisa Moore · set at Downtown St. John's

❝ Scene

Downtown St. John's

“Helen watches as the man touches the skate blade to the sharpener. There is a stainless steel cone to catch the spray of orange sparks that fly up.”

Opening of the 'Early Morning' chapter, set in November 2008 — Helen at a skate-sharpening counter in downtown St. John's with her grandson. Against this mundane present, the novel moves back to the February the Ocean Ranger went down.

Lisa Moore, February (House of Anansi Press / Grove Atlantic, 2009). Excerpt from the opening of the 'Early Morning' chapter as published on the Grove Atlantic product page. — source

Cover of February by Lisa Moore (2009)
Buy online ↗

In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O'Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns on the rig. It begins in the present-day, more than twenty-five years later, but spirals back again and again to the "February" that persists in Helen's mind and heart. A profound, gorgeous, heart-stopping work about complex love and cauterizing grief, about past and present and how memory knits them together, about a fiercely close community and its universal struggles, and finally about our need to imagine a future, no matter how fragile, before we truly come home. source

Scene

Basilica of St. John the Baptist

“She knows she walked to the Basilica. She remembers getting around the snowbanks. The snow had been shaved by the plows. High white walls scraped smooth, soaking up the street light.”

Helen's grief in the wake of the Ocean Ranger disaster is anchored at the St. John's Basilica and on named downtown streets.

Lisa Moore, February (Grove Atlantic, 2009), publisher excerpt — source

Tags

NovelGriefFamilyMemoryFisheryElegiacPost-ConfederationThe seaDisaster

You might also read

References

  1. 1.Scene source — Lisa Moore, February (House of Anansi Press / Grove Atlantic, 2009). Excerpt from the opening of the 'Early Morning' chapter as published on the Grove Atlantic product page.
  2. 2.February — blurb source