A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay
With all the setbacks that Bear and I have been experiencing lately, I can’t afford to buy a single new book until I read absolutely everything on my shelves. This is a good thing because otherwise, when would I ever get the motivation up to read Anna Karenina when it’s been sitting there for three years? Of course every time I read about a new book being released, I cry a little. But that’s OK.
A Student of Weather is one of the books I never would have read if I had a wallet full enough to provide me with the latest and greatest. It’s another one I bought at a clearinghouse on a vacation, and once the vacation was over, it no longer interested me. Now, every single time I go to a book clearinghouse, I see at least one copy sitting there, mocking me.
This is not a bad book. In fact Hay has won numerous awards in her native Canada. I can only think to blame the marketing department of the publishing house for the fact that so many copies were left to be clearanced.
The story is about Norma Joyce and her sister Lucinda, who grow up in the Saskatchewan prairie during a dust bowl like drought. This weather brings a young man named Maurice Dove to their town to study the grasses and the weather, and the very young Norma Joyce falls instantly in love.
Lucinda, her older sister, is the beautiful one, the talented one, the responsible one, while Norma Joyce is the dark and brooding one. And yet Norma’s ferocious determination gets her more of what she wants in life than Lucinda’s beauty ever could. I enjoyed reading about a character who appears to have every challenge, and still triumphs, but what I enjoyed most was the nature of those challenges. If this were a fairy tale then Norma would be the ugly stepsister while Lucinda won her prince. But in this day and age, beauty and mildness don’t go so far.
Norma becomes obsessed with Maurice who treats her cruelly and this part irked me. Norma was so young when they met that it makes sense she would have blinders on for him. People always seem to make allowances for their first love that they wouldn’t for others. But even as a young girl Norma was so formidable, I didn’t like the side of her that would crawl after a man, no matter how accurate it might have been.
Elizabeth Hay is a talented and smart writer. Her sentences are beautiful and peppered with truth. Her book is worth reading just for her descriptions and the wonderful little gems she unearths here and there.
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