The Bay of Love and Sorrows

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

If France Daigle is New Brunswick’s leading francophone writer, then
David Adams Richards is the province’s major anglophone author. He
explores its rural districts in the Miramichi trilogy and other
prize-winning novels.

The Bay of Love and Sorrows features Michael Skid, a rebellious
judge’s son, and Everette Hutch, a lower-class exconvict. When
“wannabe” meets “hardcore,” disaster results, radically altering
the characters’ lives, as a botched drug deal leads to the murder of a
local community college student.

Although Michael’s bourgeois arrogance ruins his life, this is no
simple morality tale. This assertion is supported by an examination of
the characters’ names. By the end of the book, Michael is on the
skids. His confederate, Madonna Brassaurd, is a tramp who turns to her
Catholic faith, recalling both the Holy Virgin and the raunchy
superstar. Richards does not use this technique consistently; if he did,
the plot would be reduced to a didactic allegory, populated by
one-dimensional ciphers.

The novelist substitutes social awareness for cheap nostalgia,
attacking the 1970s’ freewheeling excesses. Becker, the hip
Fredericton professor, smokes hash and “looked thrilled at the fact
that Michael would know dangerous people.” One could conclude that the
academic is another postcounterculture naif, whose morality is
dangerously warped.

The plot is not consistently predictable. Inevitably, the drug deal
will backfire on its perpetrators. Surprise—Michael turns out to be
the father of Nora Battersoil’s young son. However, Richards sets up
both Michael and the reader, only to have the character’s destiny
conclude in a totally unexpected manner. The shock may pre-empt
criticism, but this technique is more effective in films (perhaps the
author is thinking ahead). By that point, the reader is already drawn
into the story, learning from Michael’s errors.