The Lord Nelson Tavern: a Halifax watering hole in the early 1960s. The group of young university students who hang out there—a ramshackle coterie of aspiring artists, economists, poets, and philosophers—come together to gossip and ponder the big questions of art and life, all the while pining after the vain and untouchable Francesca.
Though these friends soon drift apart, their early rivalries, jealousies and conquests will continue to reverberate. In the novel’s seven interlocking sequences, Ray Smith explores the often decisive and even fatal impact of seemingly innocuous choices upon the course of our lives. With unforgettable scenes that marry the sacred and the profane, and with structural innovations that recall the works of Barthelme and Nabokov,
Lord Nelson Tavern is a must-read cult-classic of Canadian fiction.
Inhoudsopgave
1. Two Loves
2. Nora Noon
3. Break-up: From the Journals of Ti-Paulo
4. Were there flowers in the hair of the girl who danced on his grave in the morning?
5. Sarah’s Summer Holidays
6. Family Lives
7. Walk
Over de auteur
Ray Smith: A native of Mabou, Cape Breton, to which he has returned, Ray Smith lived in Montreal for forty years, where he taught English literature at Dawson College. His books include
A Night at the Opera (winner of the 1992 Qspell Hugh Mac Lennan Prize for Fiction),
Cape Breton is the Thought-Control Centre of Canada, Century, and
The Flush of Victory: Jack Bottomly Among the Virgins, all published by Biblioasis.