cbr15bingo
North America
Aubrey is the protagonist in this coming of age tale, set in the early ‘70s. I was definitely getting Catcher in the Rye vibes, I have to admit. The timing isn’t all that far off, only about a decade or so later, but the setting is a far grittier port city than New York ever was – Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Aubrey and his friends wander through their high school years with probably more drugs and more female members of the pack but with as little parental supervision, with all their relationships revolving around the seriously weird golden boy, Cyrus Mair. They meet accidentally at one of Aubrey’s sisters’ birthday parties, and Aubrey befriends this brilliant oddball of a boy, but who wouldn’t be odd as he was raised, from the age of four, by his elderly great-aunt, the Pigeon Lady. She is the survivor of a very wealthy old money family, and lives with Cyrus in a moldering mansion, filled to a great estate with flocks of pigeons, all well known to Emlyn Mair. As Aubrey, visiting Cyrus, mentions he has seen a pigeon in the house, Emlyn asks
“Which one?”
“Grey with a white wine.”
“That’s Maisy. . . She goes with Frank. She’ll find her way out, I expect. Always has.”
But as entertaining as all the characters are, the star of the show, as far as I was concerned. was Halifax itself. Following WWII, Halifax was hectic but grungy, a jumble of warehouses, clapboard homes and grimy public buildings, its waterfronts haphazard with sea-craft . . . a shabby little city, a city of somber wooden houses in dark greens and heavy reds, a city of rusting cranes, of splintered and water-lapped jetties. . .But those growing up here remember it differently, home to twisting streets, hopscotch kids, clapboard houses – a folk expression of the Maritime Demonic.” And did I mention the weather?
