West Wind, North Chatter

Linda M. Bayley is a freelance writer based in Sudbury, Ontario. She is
the author of Estrangement: Poems.

Imagine having everything you thought you ever wanted: a caring husband,
a teaching job that you love, and the baby you have craved finally
growing inside of you. Imagine having everything you ever wanted, and
then losing it swiftly, incomprehensibly, irrevocably.

West Wind, North Chatter is the story of Emily Reeves—wife, teacher,
and mother-to-be—to whom everything is seemingly lost when she
miscarries. The door to teaching is closed when her leave of absence
goes on too long, and her husband’s emotional distance becomes
physical distance when he leaves their home in Grande Prairie to go back
to Vancouver, “just for a little while.”

Through emails, first-person vignettes, and flashbacks, we see
Emily’s journey through grief as she tries to build herself a new life
in Grande Prairie’s isolation, and pours all of her resources into
opening an Internet café called Bean There. We also watch as Emily’s
friends and family find their own happiness through work, marriage, or
children, and although Emily is happy for the people she loves, her
grief is only intensified by comparison. It is only when Emily follows
through on her threat to put her husband’s tools on the Greyhound to
Vancouver that we get a hint that she will be okay.

For the most part, Kent-McDonald tells the story from Emily’s point
of view. However, she occasionally makes us privy to email between
peripheral characters, weaving subplots that really have nothing to do
with the main story. Because of the shift in viewpoint, we often get
information that Emily could only have gotten if she’d been spying on
her customers. These shifts are in clear violation of the rules of
traditional first-person storytelling, and can be jarring to the
unprepared reader. But given the current trend towards fractured
narrative, whether this is a technical flaw or a literary innovation
will remain to be seen. West Wind, North Chatter may just mark the
beginning of a new generation of Canadian novels.