This is lush. A saga of how to survive a family with multiple challenges. A love of Canadian prairie and the vast grass lands. A determined girl who becomes a woman on her own terms. The kid who falls in love with the older guy who takes her seriously but keeps his distance except for one brief but important interlude with the consequences that change a life. They keep intersecting over years in ways not predictable but like weather it keeps changing and rolling over everyone involved. It's more than just a Canadian story. With more than a dash of art. ( )

Mostly liked this story of two Saskatchewan sisters, their dad, and the unexpected Ontario man who comes by a couple of times to study grass. Norma Joyce is more interesting as a child than she is as an adult (she's more normal then), and Lucinda gets more interesting. The dad is consistent. The mysterious man turns into a dull typical man. Lots of references to plants, though, so a nice story for a botanist (assuming the references are all accurate).
Depth, wisdom, life: it all happens here. A decent piece of literature without drama or extreme tragedy. ( )

Elizabeth Hay has this wonderful knack of really embedding you in the location of her novels. One morning, I was so deeply surrounded by 1930s Saskatchewan dust that it was a surprise to see Ontario trees and a lake outside my window when I put the book down.

A lot of the book is about the uneasy relationship between citizens of those two provinces. Norma Joyce Hardy is Saskatchewan: mercurial, productive and yet needy. Maurice Dove is Ontario: sophisticated, confident, self-absorbed.

Loved it. ( )

A beautifully written novel.

I am generally facinated when stories open in a geographical region with which I am unfamiliar, and this one did - in Saskatchewan during the Dust Bowl years of the Depression. The word pictures were strong and evocative, both during this time and at the end of the book when the heroine returns in the 1970's.

The well-crafted story centers around Nora Joyce, a darkly unattractive, introspective child who is little loved and works hard to construct a world for herself where it doesn't matter. She is motherless, and lives in a household consisting of her beautiful sister, Lucinda, her father Ernest (who blames her for the death of her twin brother Norman), and occasional long visits from a traveling author-naturalist, Maurice.

The story falters in the last quarter, and the ending is unsatisfying -- almost as if the author ran out of things in Nora Joyce's life to share. I kept looking for an epilogue, but no. ( )

9 year old Norma Joyce lives on a Saskatchewan farm during the great depression with her father and 18 year old sister. A young man appears in a blizzard, and both girls fall in love with him. The book ends several decades later.

The first half of this novel captivated me with its interesting story and gorgeous writing. However, later half of the book covers Norma Joyce's adult years in Ottawa and New York City, and I didn't really get the point. ( )