That Just Happened!

Richards, David Adams. Nights Below Station Street.  McClelland & Stewart. (1988).

Nights Below Station Streetis David Adams Richards’s haunting chronicle of like among the working classes in a small northern New Brunswick mill town.

It is Christmas of 1972, and the novel centres on the Walsh family.  There is the father, Joe, strong, cheerful, and optimistic in the face of continuing unemployment.  There is his wife, Rita, hard-working and willing to believe the best about people; and there is their teenage daughter Adele, whose explosive but caring relationship with her father wars constantly with her desire for independence.  Richards uses his remarkable powers of observation and sympathy to delineate his characters’ wayward emotions and their inner lives.

Nights Below Station Street, which was made into a Gemini Award-winning film of the same name, won the Governor General’s Award for 1988.

From the Back Cover

This novel is like a snapshot into the lives of the Walsh family and their immediate friends.  I felt like the author was building up to a huge event, but it never really ended up coming.  There was a wedding at the end of the book (I refuse to tell you who.  No, I won’t.) but it wasn’t exactly the conflict you expect after following the characters through this short period in their life.  I recently discovered that this is the first book in a series of three, so perhaps more comes to blows later in the series.

I think it is interesting that there was a lot of build up, but it did not seem to go anywhere.  I think the author managed to closely mimic real life.  In real life you go to school, work hard, join teams and then there is graduation.  An everyday event (like the wedding) that is special, but no amazing confessions, or blowouts occur.  The characters in the book seem to be moving about their lives, which is marked by notable events, but never facing any out spectacular happenings that we as Readers have come to expect.  Who wants to read about something that they are living?  And about characters that so closely mimic those people you know in real life? 

Well, I do.  I thought this book was really good.  I liked that I could recognize the characters and the events in this book as ones that I know in my life.  It kind of gives validation  to my feelings and thoughts.  ”Misery loves company” and although at first I could relate to the petulant teen and her disfunctional family, I started to see the love between them that rode the undercurrents of their life.

I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who likes reading about the human condition.  Themes include relationships, love and marriage, and community.

I read this towards my Governor General Award Winners for Fiction Challenge.