Heave

by Christy Ann Conlin

Bursting with wonder and delicate despair, Serrie Sullivan longs for the world, but she's trapped, just like Dorothy in Oz. Serrie's got a nasty secret. It's festering inside her, because in the gothic Annapolis Valley, hey, that's what you do -- you never show and you never, ever tell. As she dashes from her wedding altar on the run of her life, ardently wanting to understand what has brought her to this moment, Serrie sweeps us up in an exhilarating and poignant journey from rural Nova Scotia to London bars, to strip clubs by the docks, through mental hospital wards and rehab centres, back to quiet verandahs and porch swings in serene Lupin Cove. Along the way we meet a delightful array of off-beat characters including Serrie's best friends, Dearie and Dearie, the anglicized Acadian who wants to go to New Orleans to find her Cajun relatives, and Elizabeth, who would like nothing better than to spend the rest of her life picking strawberries. Heave explores the joys and agonies of family, of what one generation inherits from the next, and of how past and present are inexorably linked. Memories weave through the book as Serrie searches for equanimity in a life that intoxicates her with its beauty as it knocks her to her knees.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Novels, Humor

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 8, 2002

About the author

Christy Ann Conlin is a writer, essayist, broadcaster, wildflower enthusiast and public speaker who lives with her family in seaside Nova Scotia.

Watermark, her first collection of short stories, won the Miramichi Reader Gold for Short Fiction, was shortlisted for the 2019 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the 2020 Evergreen Award.

Conlin's first novel, Heave, was a Globe and Mail “Top 100” book, a finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2003 and was shortlisted for the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award. Heave was also longlisted for the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Novels of the Decade. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed genre-bending novel, The Memento.

Her short fiction has been long listed for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the American Short Fiction Prize. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including Brick and Best Canadian Stories. Christy Ann hosted the popular 2012 CBC national summer radio series Fear Itself. She teaches at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies online Creative Writing program.

THE SPEED OF MERCY, Conlin's new novel, publishes on March 23, 2021 Canada, and August 3, 2021, USA. The Speed of Mercy will also be published as an ebook, audiobook and braille book.

Reviews

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel caused a sensation in my little world because it was clearly set in my home town! This was the first novel I'd read set in the Annapolis Valley — except The Mountain and the Valley, which was historical fiction (pre-WW2).

In "The Mountain and the Valley" the setting was pastoral and the problems were such things as a lame horse. In "Heave" the many problems encountered are much more contemporary and relevant to modern readers.

The need to recognize problems, and face them, is depicted in a moving, heart-felt manner, and this novel was an auspicious debut.

[Tam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful book, made even better by being set right here at home.

[Sophia Shelley · Rating 1 out of 5]

The torture is over.

[Madison Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know, it wasn't my fave, but it portrayed addiction in a way that was easier to understand and sympathize with the protagonist.

[Dianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this book comes from a line in a song called "Farewell To Nova Scotia":
"When I am far away on the briny ocean tossed
Will you ever heave a sigh and a wish for me?"
The lyrics and the Celtic lilt of in the music stir up a sadness, a longing for something better that perfectly describes the tone of this book.

The book opens with Seraphina Sullivan, a troubled 21 year old from rural Nova Scotia, fleeing - in wedding dress, veil and high heels - from the church in which she was about to get married. She bolts from the church leaving pieces of her gown in the door, crying and laughing, runs through the town and all the way out a country road to her parents home. She takes refuge in an outhouse, one of several that her father has collected and placed around the property.

From there, "Serrie" looks back over her life - her stint in rehab, her sudden and unexplained flight to England, and the time she spent in an asylum - trying to figure out how she got to this point in her life. We learn about her mother and brother, her gentle father, her grandmother, a practical woman with a sometimes scornful and always pointed way of sharing her opinion (my favorite character in this book), and her best friends Dearie and Elizabeth. The characters are all as quirky and hard to fathom as real people and are what make this book tick, far more than the plot.

On the cover of my library copy a reviewer says this book is "a wildly energetic debut" and another calls it "astonishing" and "gorgeously fun". I didn't find it wild or energetic, astonishing or even that much fun, but I did the like beautiful Nova Scotia setting and the wonderfully flawed, so very human characters. I didn't like some of the language, the fairly creepy cover or the way the book ended. Actually it didn't feel like an ending to me at all. I was left thinking "Ok....so then what?".

So...I liked "Heave" to a point, but not enough to recommend it. I chose it because other reviewers talked about the rural N.S. landscape and the endearing small town characters; it just turned out to be a little grittier than I'd expected. It certainly has it's good points; it just wasn't what I was looking for.

[Sally Edsall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up on a visit to Nova Scotia in February 2003, and I am most impressed. Set mostly in the Annapolis Valley, and partly in Halifax, I felt Conlin drew word pictures of the area and its people that rang very true. The student life in Halifax came to life, as I enjoyed the vibrant and youthful pub scene in Halifax (I am old enough to be those students' parent but the scene was so age-mixed it was very welcoming).

Like most early novels, this one seems to have more than a touch of autobiography. Apart from the truthfulness of the setting, Conlin has really got to the heart of the depression and aloneness of the young who stand somewhat apart from the mores and values of theur family. The tensions within family, where there is often unstated, but overwhelming love which somehow just isn't adequately communicated, was painful, raw, and honest.

A growing-up story by a young writer who is a real talent. Melancholy (as I find much Canadian literature to be) but ultimately a book of hope.

[Theryn Fleming · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Heave post.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book written by my former creative writing teacher.

[Stephanie Reicker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I read back in like 2006.
I can’t speak to the writing anymore because it’s been so long, but I remember loving the story. It was one of the first books that really got me into reading, so it will forever have a place in my heart.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

[Sheena Joly · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Pooker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christmas booty - One of the 2011 Canada Reads top 40

I've never been to Nova Scotia, so I don't know if Lupin's Cove, Bigelow or Foster are real or fictional places. It does not matter; I want to go there. I want to go to the world that Christy Conlin created for me in Nova Scotia. I want to walk (or even run) Lupin Cove Road. I want to smell the salty air of the Bay of Fundy and the pine and the stinky fish. I especially want to see Cyril's outhouses and sit in #9.

Cyril, Seraphina Sullivan's father, reminds me a bit of my own dad and his crackpot, yet somehow wise ideas.

In fact Seraphina Sullivan's family reminds me of my own family, of every family really and yet like no other.

I love books about family and the relationships in them. Serrie's family is full of eccentric characters. But then don't we all think of our own families as a little bit odd, a little embarrassing and yet, when it comes down to it, so so special? I howled with laughter (in cahoots with Serrie's friends, Dearie and Elizabeth) and mortification (for Serrie herself) when Serrie goes shopping for a bathing suit with her Aunt Gallie and "the great-bargain-maple-leaf suit was purchased."

As I read I loved more and more the relationship Serrie had with her friends Dearie and Elizabeth. They are best friends for ever and ever no matter where any of them might be or what warts and short comings they had. So too, I loved Serrie's relationship with her brother Percy, each of them seeming to know what the other was enduring, there for each other. And with her father in his gentle, slow witted way. As for Serrie's mother, I saw her as hardworking, devoted and loving, although in a somewhat understated quiet way. The best of course is Serrie's (and the whole family's) relationship with Grammie. Grammie is not understated in any way. It is Grammie who holds the family together and "pushes [it] through" the hard times.

I think I loved Serrie the most, although she was perhaps the hardest for me to understand. Perhaps that's why. Why was she crazily fleeing her wedding? Why did her hard but not overly unusual childhood end up with her becoming a troubled drunk as a teen? Why did she describe her family as "a house full of ornament people in danger of falling over and shattering"?

The ending of this book took me by surprise and I found I had to reassess some of the things I thought I knew. And so I hearkened back to Grammie's advice, "...there was always an adjustment period, where you just have to go about your business, even if you felt bad, and let things settle, allow life to find a pace and a routine."

A wonderful book!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh this was a hard read, the kind where you want to smack most of the characters upside the head and say, "Stop self-destructing!" But of course that never works, not in real life and not in good literature. Heave is one of the more realistic portrayals of modern rural Nova Scotian life I've read. It ain't your great-great grandmother's Valley, that's for sure. Its brilliance is its characters, who are charming yet often spiteful, nasty people with bitter pasts, psychotic family dynamics and bellyfuls of anger keeping them from making good choices. And that includes the protagonist, Serrie. I became attached to her despite her flaws and my stomach knotted whenever I saw new troubles coming at her, which was pretty much in every chapter, right to the awful end. And this was done despite some unusual, and somewhat distracting, flitting between second and first-person narrative. But the story was strong enough to hold me through that and Serrie's downward spiral - not your typical junkie-does-bad story - will stay with me for some time.

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me homesick for Nova Scotia so badly. Conlin captures the valley and Halifax so well, the characters using just the right amount of Nova Scotia vernacular to make it believable without becoming caricatured. The story is slow to start off and quite dense for the first few pages. Characters are sometimes thrown in with formal introductions being made a hundred pages later (like Gordie). But the story really starts to take off somewhere around page forty, where if the reader has persevered through what seems to be impenetrable stream-of-consciousness drunken ramblings, you are treated to an engaging picture of life on the east coast.

The ending, however, much like the beginning, is unsatisfying. The last ten pages or so feel rushed and so much happens so quickly that it is disappointing to get so far only to have so much fall apart with what it seems to be a mad dash to the finish, leaving as much emotional carnage in its wake as possible.

[Eugène L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a remarkable source of information for all those who are interested in Nova Scotia’s culture and everyday life.

As for the novel itself… Well, all the characters are alive and well-developed. So, we do care for Serrie. The plot is interesting to follow. Why have Serrie fled to London? Will she find a right boyfriend? Will she return to the university? Etc.

However, the author tries to describe every single detail in every single scene, as well as every single thought, feeling and association. And it’s a little bit too much: it may take Serrie some 2 pages to drink a cup of tea, to eat a sandwich or to walk 10 meters. Sometimes, it’s simply difficult to follow the story.

[R. H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the author, I live in Nova Scotia - in what is referred to in the book as 'the city' - and my familiarity with the Annapolis Valley setting played a part in my interest in this novel.

This is a powerful book. I must say I was somewhat unprepared for the heaping helpings of human unhappiness and tragedy captured so unsparingly in its pages. I did think that one of the tragedies was a bit on the gratuitous side.

But there is no denying Conlin's very large talents. I look forward to reading her new novel Memento at some point.

[Beth G · Rating 4 out of 5]

The jacket promised a female version of Catcher in the Rye, and I found I liked this book more for that concept than for its actual execution. The ending was a bit predictable/cliched. The author definitely shows promise, though.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just read this! Loved it! Found it much better than She's Come Undone, which I found over-rated.

[Raha]

This novel is set upon Christy Ann's humorous portrayal of Nova Scotia. She's currently writing her next novel, a ghost story, I'm told.

[Hilary MacLeod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still reading it -- but the author is fast and furious and very, very funny. A coming of age book with difference. The difference is what the "Toronto Star" calls "an excess if talent."

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

The review that inspired reading: 'tragic and uplifting tale of small town NS.' For me, not worth finishing. The NS 'way with words' didn't counter the failure to connect with the main character

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5