Snow Road Station

by Elizabeth Hay

From the Giller Prize-winning author comes a novel, witty and wise, about thwarted ambition, unrealized dreams, the enduring bonds of female friendship, and love’s capacity to surprise us at any age.

In the winter of 2008, as snow falls without interruption, an actor in a Beckett play blanks on her lines. Fleeing the theatre, she beats a retreat into her past and arrives at Snow Road Station, a barely discernible dot on the map of Ontario.

The actor is Lulu Blake, in her sixties now, a sexy, seemingly unfooled woman well-versed in taking risks. Out of work, humiliated, she enters the last act of her life wondering what she can make of her diminished self. In Snow Road Station she decides she is through with drama, but drama, it turns out, isn’t through with her. She thinks she wants peace. It turns out she wants more.

Looming in the background is that autumn’s global financial meltdown, while in the foreground family and friends animate a round of weddings, sap harvests, love affairs, and personal turmoil. At the centre of it all is the lifelong friendship between Lulu and Nan. As the two women contemplate growing old, they surrender certain hard-held dreams and confront the limits of the choices they’ve made and the messy feelings that kept them apart for decades.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Audiobook, Contemporary, Friendship

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 11, 2023

About the author

From Elizabeth Hay's web site:
"Elizabeth Hay was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, the daughter of a high school principal and a painter, and one of four children. When she was fifteen, a year in England opened up her world and set her on the path to becoming a writer. She attended the University of Toronto, then moved out west, and in 1974 went north to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. For the next ten years she worked as a CBC radio broadcaster in Yellowknife, Winnipeg, and Toronto, and eventually freelanced from Mexico. In 1986 she moved from Mexico to New York City, and in 1992, with her husband and two children, she returned to Canada, settling in Ottawa, where she has lived ever since.

In 2007 Elizabeth Hay's third novel, Late Nights on Air, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first novel was A Student of Weather (2000), a finalist for the Giller Prize, the Ottawa Book Award, and the Pearson Canada Reader's Choice Award at The Word on the Street, and winner of the CAA MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction and the TORGI Award. Her second novel, Garbo Laughs (2003), won the Ottawa Book Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. Hay is also the author of Crossing the Snow Line (stories, 1989); The Only Snow in Havana (non-fiction, 1992), which was a co-winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction; Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (non-fiction, 1993), and Small Change (stories, 1997), which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Rogers Communications Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Hay received the Marian Engel Award for her body of work in 2002."

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

My updated added review starts under the row of rainbows🌈 🌈🌈🌈


“Station Road” was very touching…. sooooo wonderful!!!
MY FAVORITE ELIZABETH HAY book!!!
The characters are so real — (they live inside my head like friends I cherish).
I miss them!
You’ll miss them too!

I felt every emotion: joy, anger, fear, relief, regret, sadness,
disappointments, despair, painful riffs, jealousy, forgiveness, admiration, hope, hopelessness, humor, love … etc.

Beautifully written….(forgive me — but I’m still melting)…..

….we witness how the characters deal with their challenges and regrets … how they evolve—
and come to ‘feel’ just how much relationships are the heartbeat of everything that’s really important….
and….
we experience how each person affects one another.

Oh my……and the natural beauty - the setting — GORGEOUS!!

…..I LOVE this book ENORMOUSLY!!!
Love love love!!
……like pure maple syrup:
Delicate at first—
Then Powerful—
Smooth—
Sweet—
A little smoky—
Then WOW!
…..when’s the movie coming out?

“You need a long life, she was thinking, to see how things turn out”.

Full review in a day or two!!!
with a Canadian bouquet of friends & family.
🌷🎭🌷📘🌷🇨🇦🌷🐇🌷🔫🍁

Thank you Elizabeth Hay >
I love your perceptive, insightful, enjoyable, character-driven compassionate storytelling!!
5 strong stars from me!!

Last: THANK YOU JODI….. a beautiful soul who read this before me — and now I can’t wait to chitchat more with her about lots of little details!!!

I ‘do’ promise more review to come soon.
I’ll be 71 tomorrow- and this was a very heartwarming B’day gift!

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

Added review:

Snow Road Station…… (a little real history):
“Snow was a man. The road was named after its surveyor, not the weather, a fact that disappointed at first, until the idea of it became more tolerable, or at least inevitable, and the name’s meaning expanded all over again. Snow Road Station was an arrival, a departure, a long wait—a place of rest, a stoppage, yet a road”.
There had been a time when more maple syrup was shipped from Snow Station Road than from anywhere else in Canada.

About the story….
….characters, thoughts, chitchat, excerpts:
Lulu Blake was sixty-two. She never married — and had no children. She’d been an actress most of her life: talented — a good actress — perhaps not drop dead gorgeous at her age now — but she had ‘allure magnetism’ > she was attractive and had ‘sex appeal’. She also had a subtle feisty sassiness side.

Lulu (short for Louise) was in the middle of a theatre stage production called “Happy Days” ….playing the leading role….a highly desirable role. But Lulu had been forgetting her lines felt and was embarrassed about it.
She decided to take a few days off - take a break (even her stage manager said a break might do her good)….
but Lulu never signed out - or told anyone where she was going, (woops-a-daisy), plus the phone service in ‘Snow Road Station’ was unreliable.
Lulu could be in hot water - bolting as she did - not telling anyone involved in her play ( director, stage manager, nobody)….but for now….Lulu had some escaping to do (she could practice her lines while away)….
and as the singer Led Zeppelin might have said, she had a ‘whole-lotta-lovin’ to do……(re-connecting with family and friends, a wedding to attend, help out on her brother’s farm with the animals and the making of maple syrup….(collecting the sap…and all the other steps involved: boiling/evaporating/ filtering, etc.), some personal healing to do from the past, some small town enrichment living, and some choices to make about her future.

What makes this book so great are the characters — we want to hang out with them — be part of their lives ….. we worry about their choices and care for their well-being.
There’s an array of relationship trials and tribulations - smart dialogue- page turning storytelling- (real-life scenarios to contemplate), and absolutely delicious intimacy.

Lulu and Nan were best friends……
Nan’s son Blake was getting married.
Lulu’s old boyfriend Tony Lloyd (gold-smuggling ex-boyfriend), was also in town for the wedding. He was an overweight - wealthy businessman/ who presently lived in Bangkok.
Tony use to have a great thin body. He was a heart throb during their youth. Now, he had a bloated face, shaggy white hair, a beard and wild mustache.
Lulu says to him: “Honey, you’re a mess. You should lay off those candy bars”. (in truth, there was still something lovable about Lloyd)……

This next part is a minor part of the story — but I feel a need to mention it:
Lulu notice many over-weight people in Snow Road Station…..she thought it might be a small town thing.
Personally (and this is my ‘only’ criticism of this novel), I had mixed feelings about Lulu’s critical inner voice about other people’s bodies…..(it came up more than once). I’m not comfortable with “oversized dumpling” references. At the same time I knew Lulu was actually beating herself up more (feeling the blow-of-failure for forgetting her lines- judging ‘herself’ harshly)…. so I felt her criticism of others came from — really — not being satisfied herself — making it easier to find fault in others. And isn’t this a common thing we humans do?
So — I felt that throughout this novel there were many (comfortable and not always comfortable) real issues to examine.

There are others issues ….(an opportunity to contemplate the high cost of making assumptions)…..
Lulu and Nan were best friends — but they also had some history to clear up. All very relatable. How many of us have made assumptions about another (“they didn’t call me — they don’t care for me anymore”….yada, yada, yada)….only to have been completely off base? The story between the two of them when they were not in communication is so real - achingly heartfelt.
But true friends — they were — and as the story unfolds — we witness their closeness-journey (involving forgiveness) with great admiration.

The subtle poignant issues throughout (with charm, humor, warmth, and authenticity) - in this-gem-of-a-novel reminded me again just how brilliant Elizabeth Hay is. She knows what she’s doing. There are reasons she does what she does. It’s no accident she the Giller Prize-winning author of six novels

Other tidbits:
The wedding was going to be worth watching.
“A wedding of people who disliked each other, and from now on would have to see more of each other, on one side a family of evangelical and prolific farm folk. On the other, ex-New Yorkers with deep roots in Canada and their own idiosyncratic ways”.

Blake and Bethany’s wedding breathed “mismatched” —
“trapped like rats”…
Bethany with her widening midriff, if you knew to look….and Blake “holding himself away from her as if he were his own ten foot pole”.

More tidbits: a small introduction of a few of characters:
….Ducky, (Irene was her birth name), seventeen, Lulu’s niece — was an old soul —she wanted to be an actress and Lulu encouraged her.
….John Sharpe - Nan’s ex-husband was a psychopath bully!
….Hugh Shapiro — the piano Turner …. he and Lulu developed a ‘thing’
….Guy ( Lulu’s brother) ….Guy and Lulu always had a wonderful sibling relationship. They shared some similarities of unfulfilled dreams.
….Sheba …. was the treasured dog……(Sheba did a little cross country skiing with Lulu).
….*Nan…..(Lulu’s best friend was one of my favorite characters)

And ….as long as this is — there are no spoilers…..

I loved the human sensitivity, the environment, the intimate storytelling…..

It’s a feast for our souls!

A thought about the title:
……it’s so fitting:
*Snow* — (it did snow a lot) *Road* (driving ‘was’ involved) *Station* (the destination)….
I wouldn’t mind visiting this small village in Ontario, myself.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mostly thoroughly enjoyed the week I’ve just spent with this lovely bunch of people up at Snow Road Station in eastern Ontario (though I’m just going to pretend that the disgusting outcome of the late-night ride Lulu accepted from a friend’s ex didn’t happen).😝

This large group of family and friends spent their lazy, snowed-in winters reading books, making friendly conversion, and when they weren’t “sugaring-off”—tapping their trees to collect and boil the sap til it was a sweet, amber-coloured maple syrup—they spent time pondering life: where they belonged and how they’d spend the next stage of life. By the time spring arrived, warmth from the sun was sprouting flowers and lifting spirits all around. And decisions would be made. Some would bid a fond farewell while others would remain. A newborn appeared, and a deep, long-silent love was confessed. Things were definitely looking up, and who knows how Snow Road Station will be when the next snows of winter begin to fly.

I admit there was no plot to speak of, really, but for those of us who love a great character-driven novel, this was a hugely satisfying read. Elizabeth Hay publishes quite sparingly—usually just one novel every 3-4 years—but fans are happy to wait and eagerly welcome the next.

4 “this life is like comfort food” stars. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Tooter · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Snow was a man. The road was named after its surveyor, not the weather, a fact that disappointed at first, until the idea of it became more tolerable, or at least inevitable, and the name’s meaning expanded all over again. Snow Road Station was an arrival, a departure, a long wait — a place of rest, a stoppage, yet a road.

Bringing back a colourful character from His Whole Life, Snow Station Road is the story of Lulu Blake — a talented actress, now in her mid-sixties, having to face the fact that she will never make the big time — and as Lulu returns to her hometown for a wedding, reuniting with old friends and family will force Lulu to consider what sorts of things she sacrificed in her lifelong quest for the acknowledgement and applause of strangers. I haven’t always truly connected with Elizabeth Hay’s novels, despite her admittedly engaging eye for detail and lovely sentences, but I enjoyed this exploration of ageing and ambition and the quest to know oneself very much; as lovely and evocative a piece of Canadiana as a Group of Seven painting or a Gordon Lightfoot song. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

A man’s character changes and he becomes himself. Lulu had read that somewhere, surprised by the turn of thought. Not that he changes and becomes someone else. He becomes the person he’s meant to be. What would it take? she wondered. Becoming who you’re meant to be, instead of turning into a major disappointment.

Returning to Snow Road Station (an actual place in rural Ontario, an hour into the bush outside Ottawa) for a wedding allows Lulu to not only reconnect with her best friend Nan (who looks like she has everything figured out) and her brother Guy (who definitely does not), but she also mixes with the younger generation; all struggling to figure themselves out at the beginning of their adulthood. This is a novel of characters, their interactions and conversations, and the plot arc mostly follows Lulu’s soul growth. I admit that that sounds like a quiet novel — and it is — but it may be the only thing worth writing about.

A few random quotes for flavour:

• “If you want to look old,” Nan said, “have a face lift.”

• Canadians think ten dollar bills are purple, Americans think all guns are loaded; and that’s the difference between Canadians and Americans, she thought.

• He seemed a lot younger than thirty-two, but then we’re all twelve years old inside, she thought, some of the time.

And, throughout, the landscape — fields and lakes and sugarbush encircled by winding country roads — as it changes throughout the seasons from snow-covered to leaf to an autumnal blaze of colour, acts as balm and inspiration to Lulu’s thwarted aspirations:

Up on the hilltop the heroes of crimson and orange were baring their chests, stabbing themselves in the heart, tossing fistfuls of coins in the air. Such bravura performances. Such scene stealers. Such hams. All you have to do, she thought, is put yourself in the way of beauty, put yourself into the incredible swing of it. And her mind moved through the whole dance from sap to bud to shade to these days of glory — these extravagant last acts — before the trees lost everything to the wind and the rain, and oncoming winter. Then for months on end they would go naked, crayoned by snow. And then begin again.

There is much more plot than I’m recording here — Lulu meets men who range from bad to good; there is quite a bit of domestic drama in Nan’s household — and just as the background detail of the 1995 Quebec Referendum didn’t seem quite relevant to the plotline when I read His Whole Life, it seemed a bit immaterial to set Snow Station Road in 2008 and have the briefest of commentary on Obama’s election campaign and the American financial crisis. Still, Lulu’s journey was credible and affecting and I enjoyed the whole thing.

[Stitching Ghost]

I should have checked the reviews before reading this one. It wasn't bad but it really wasn't for me.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.

This was a beautifully written atmospheric novel that follows a woman in middle age finding peace and happiness with a quieter way of life. I really enjoyed just how much the setting was a core of the story. You could really feel life in Northern Canada and people who have lived there are going to recognize so much. Recommended for fans of Mary Lawson and great on audio narrated by the author herself. Many thanks to Librofm for my ALC in exchange for my honest review!

[Mary Lins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Hay’s new novel, “Snow Road Station”, is an utter delight! A breathtaking setting, unforgettable characters, and a compelling plot pushing the reader forward with her lovely prose.

Set in Snow Road Station, Ontario, Canada, over the course of spring through autumn in 2008, it’s the story of sixty-two-year-old, Lulu Blake, a modestly successful actress at a crossroad in her career and in her personal life. We spend these months with Lulu as she contemplates her future, faces the choices of her past, and decides what a true home looks like.

Lulu has the part of Winnie, in Samuel Beckett’s VERY weird play, “Happy Days”. I recommend those not familiar with the play to do a bit of research on it: look at images of the many productions of the play since it premiered in the 1960s. You can see the whole play on YouTube or watch selected parts. I promise it will enhance your reading experience.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book didn’t live up to my expectations. Lulu, her best friend Nan, and most of the other characters were in previous work by Ms. Hay. It feels like Hay wanted to bring readers up to date on what’s been happening with these folks, even though “up to date” in this case means 2008. She could have saved us the effort. Not really that much has happened since we last met them, and not much more occurs in the book. For me, the best part was the detailed description of making maple syrup. The worst part was some of the excessively descriptive language. When I got to “she paused to watch bouncing-babies of golden light do somersaults in the topmost leaves” I was relieved that this short book was almost over.

[Friederike Knabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first response: I loved it! It's exquisite and beautifully written, her characters sensitively drawn. More thoughts to come. Will be rereading HIS WHOLE LIFE. while not essential, I am intrigued to get back to some of the characters...

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Snow Road Station… The name was like a poem, she thought, or a three-act play.” Wow. I had a hard time with this author’s last book but this one’s - wow. She trusts us enough to show us a great many things and is very careful not only in how she describes things, but what she describes. Trees get considerably more ink than people do here, for a very good reason (the visceral joys of being out in the woods took my breath away,) but the characters are pretty understandable from the get-go, like the woman who was “thin and sinewy, tree and axe in one.” I enjoyed funny, self-aware Lulu, even when I didn’t totally agree with her choices. And what a thoroughly Canadian book this is: location and personality and music - Maureen Forrester, just brilliant - and a very Canadian rootedness in reality.

He spread green bills on the table. Canadians think ten-dollar bills are purple, Americans think all guns are loaded; that’s the difference between Canadians and Americans, she thought.

The interconnectedness of the characters was a surprise and a challenge to me, with linking past and present familial and social relationships. Ah well I can just read the whole thing again, can’t I. 5 maple candy stars.

[Mandoreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read most of Elizabeth Hay's books and I realize how good she is at depicting people who really know one another well--mothers and daughters, lovers and ex-lovers, old friends. This is a narratively quiet book in which an actress messes up during a performance of Beckett and heads to her friend Nan's in the wood in order to lick her wounds. She finds there a world of beauty and peace and people who matter to her and for whom she too matters. There is some idealizing of this life but it is a wonderfully seductive one. Read this book when you are in a pensive mood and are looking for good company--not to mention the sound of maple sap dripping into buckets.

[M.A. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This character driven novel was slow and uninteresting.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a character driven novel the characters should be compelling, no? Nothing really happened and I’m surprised something like this even got published. Ho hum.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some good things in this novel about a 60-something actor dealing with a possible end of career crisis precipitated by her blanking out on some lines while performing the part of Winnie in Beckett's "Happy Days." She retreats to the small Ontario town where she was born, reconnects with family and friends, and endures an assault.

I was a little surprised by the way that the story developed. I thought that the main character, Lulu, would use the support of her hometown friends to find her way back. Some of the most interesting parts of the novel to me were her musings about Beckett's play and its challenges. But the novel veered off in another direction after Lulu was abruptly fired and replaced in the part. To me, this development lacked credibility. After convincingly laying out the difficulty of the role, to the point where those playing Winnie spend months in preparation for the part, the author asks us to believe that a replacement could be brought up to speed on the role in a couple of days' time.

The development does set up the rest of the story in examination of the book's most interesting question, how to restart after you've literally sacrificed everything in pursuit of a career, which fell short of your expectations. Do you keep banging your head against the wall, with ever diminishing returns, or do you shift gears, difficult at any age, but particularly challenging when you are older and don't have any useful skills other than those applicable to the career that you are leaving behind? It's quite a dilemma, and the description of Lulu's efforts, and her thoughts about them, are often insightful and intriguing. The many vivid descriptions of small town life in Canada are nicely done, and I learned more about the making of maple syrup than I ever wanted to know.

So why my lukewarm reaction to the book? I think that it is because the author tried so hard to make the story deep and meaningful that it all started to sound artificial. Much of the novel consisted of conversations involving Lulu and her friends and relatives. But there was no everyday conversation or joking or humor. Every conversation, it seemed, was something deep and meaningful, where this character or that one examined his or her upbringing, parents, love life, or life choices. And it is not only Lulu who is experiencing a dramatic life change. Pretty much every person introduced undergoes some life-altering experience. As the novel goes on, Lulu becomes the confidante of almost every other character, even those who barely knew her when she arrived in Snow Road Station after her acting crisis. And every conversation is deep and meaningful and the seemingly all-knowing Lulu offers her wisdom to all who seek her counsel. In between, she finds a boyfriend and has some great sex. By the end of the novel, Lulu is caring for a new-born baby, has saved the marriage of the baby's parents and is finding life partners for those who thought they would never find love again. She tells them how they should live their lives, and they follow her advice to the letter, achieving the happiness that had eluded them previously. Lulu may have crashed in her acting career, but she has become a superstar in the world of the deep and meaningful conversation.

Yes, the author was trying too hard, to the point where the book lost its naturalness. It's a short novel, but, by the end, seemed interminable. I'm probably being too critical, but the author clearly has talent, had a good idea for a story and it all kind of fizzled for me. Disappointing.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender, poetic and evocative - Snow Road Station is a small but might novel. Elizabeth Hay returns to Lulu Blake, an aging actress, and a character from a former story. Lulu is struggling in the starring role of Beckett's "Happy Days" and she flees to Snow Road Station to visit with her childhood friend Nan and attend Nan's sons wedding. Feeling at odds with her life long choice of career, she is suddenly seduced by the March landscape surrounding her, especially, the snow, lit by the sun that Hay makes a character on its own. Through little jewels of description and interplay, we learn about the people in Lulu's life - Nan and her secrets about her failed marriages, her old lover who launders money for disreputable people, Nan's two sons who are both struggling in different ways and Ducky, her niece who aspires to acting too. We watch the unhappy wedding unfold and then move into the life of the sugar shack. The intense process of making maple syrup becoming a metaphor for a life lived. Hay provides us many lenses to view this world and our own, through the eyes of actor, or musician or painter. "All you have to do, she thought, is put yourself in the way of beauty, put yourself in the incredible swing of it." As we read Hay's words, we do just that.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a quiet little book to read on a cold winter day, this might be the book for you. I appreciate Hay’s colourful descriptions of the changing seasons in both life and nature. I’d like to have a warm drink in Nan’s screened in porch and maybe sit on the dock at Guy’s to watch the sunset. If you want to learn about the process of making maple syrup this book has it covered too.

[Emily Stephenson-Bowes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A balm for the soul of one homesick girl from Lanark County.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, this satisfying, tender look at getting older filled my heart with warmth all the way through. Yet another lovely triumph for Elizabeth Hay.

[Rachelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little novel will stay with me. There is a graphic and disturbing sexual assault. (Or is it an attempted sexual assault? I don’t even know, and therein lies part of the problem.)

The #MeToo movement exposed just how many of us have been assaulted and at any age, but I forgot and have mostly thought of it as a younger woman’s problem. Not that I don’t take preventative measures every time I leave the safety of my home, even at almost fifty.

What disturbed me is that she, as an older woman, didn’t feel it was worthwhile to report the assault. I can’t say I would do different. It didn’t go well for me when I reported one. It only added to the trauma.

When is that going to change? It made me realize that this man, after decades of experience, knew nothing would happen to him and that allowed him to continue. To think of how many women he traumatized. Anyway, I was thinking so much about this, the end of the novel is a blur because I couldn’t focus on any new direction.

I love Elizabeth Hay’s writing. It’s subtle but powerful. Her characters feel real. I won’t say everything felt original (remnants of other novels I’ve read recently popped up), but it was time well spent.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, interesting characters, strong themes. Drenched in Canadiana from the hard work of making maple syrup to snowy landscapes.
Her understated yet powerful description of an ordinary rainfall is extraordinary. Elizabeth Hay reminds me to look, to see, to marvel at beauty that surrounds me and that I’m part of.
Lulu is at the end of what has been a long road. Endings and beginnings are always great hinges for characters to swing on. Resisting, and then accepting with insight and wisdom, rather than bitter resignation. Suffering humiliation personally and professionally. Lulu the veteran actress is at centre stage in this Act 3 story. It could be her finest role.

[Ernt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not my normal read but because someone I love recommended it. I read it and it was pretty easy. Took me a few days but it was kind of the kind of book I go like what was the point though. I have to say this could definitely be a movie. I definitely you know what it is. It's it's it's complicated a little bit. It's a Nora Efron movie in a book sort of baby. I don't know that's my vibe and my take on this.

[Melanie Ball · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book immersed in comforting place, just like the actual hamlet of Snow Road Station.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read Snow Road Station because I really enjoyed Elizabeth Hay's novel Late Nights on Air and a year ago our book club read Alone in the Classroom.
This novel is about thwarted ambition, unrealized dreams, the enduring bonds of female friendship, and love's capacity to surprise us at any age.
Huge thanks to Annapolis Valley Regional Library and the librarians, who manage, organize and keep the libraries running, for the loan of this book.
3 stars

[Dilia Narduzzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but I do with most all of Hay's books I've read. Lulu is a neat character and Snow Road Station a great setting! I liked it a lot.

[Gayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel Elizabeth Hay has the right touch writing about Canada and Canadian people. I could visualize the maple syrup as it comes from the trees, the whole process of it all. At the same time, there was the beautiful prose describing middle age.

[Pavlina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elizabeth Hay's novel Snow Road Station takes us into the world of Louise (Lulu) Blake, a 62-year-old actress, although her voice seems to be a decade older. Lulu struggles with forgetting her lines in Beckett's play "Happy Days" and tries to figure out what she is to do with her life.

The narrative provides extensive insight into Lulu's thoughts but somewhat reinforces clichés about older women instead of challenging them. While the author does not shy away from addressing issues of sexuality in advanced age - for which thumbs up 👍, Lulu's character largely falls into the usual mould of spinsters and pushy aunts, especially thanks to her habit of meddling in others' affairs, combined with her self-centredness and intrusive mentoring. It's puzzling why other characters seek guidance from someone who hasn't succeeded in her relationships and is still figuring out her own life. However, they are lucky that Lulu moves into their neighbourhood - just in time to save many a relationship! Despite trying to portray a wise matriarch soothing old wounds and reconnecting the family, Lulu comes off as a confused individual searching for the easiest path.

The recurring references to Beckett's "Happy Days" in the first half, promising a deeper exploration of the identity questions and parallels between Lulu and Winnie, disappointingly fade out. The banshee, mentioned several times throughout the initial part, becomes another missed opportunity, adding to the unfulfilled promises of the text. Instead, the narrative shifts towards the details of maple syrup production in the latter part.

This keeps Snow Road Station somewhere in the middle - despite the pleasantly flowing lyrical narrative, it leaves some thematic threads hanging, letting the last part drown in a thick layer of sweet maple syrup.

[Erin Kowal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Hay writes quiet Canadian nature (outdoors and relational): beautifully. I love everything.

“The leaves became more yellow, the yellows more orange. Always what they are — and so changed from what they were.”


“She put on her brother’s cross-country skis and went out early. A skiff of fresh snow and her mind evened out and the dream-riddled night fell away. What ease of movement over the white and under the blue. Off to the side broken twigs had left imprints in the softening snow. Looking down into one well of blue light, she saw a black twig and remembered her set-designing pal Eldon, telling her about a turning point in his life. How he had been sitting on a rock beside a lake, alone and desolate, when he noticed insects skittering across the surface of the water. Then fish moving under the water. Then weeds moving under the fish. The weeds reminded him of winter grasses bent over by drifting snow. Then a footstep in the woods — the crackle of leaves — connected him to even more hidden life. And he realized he was part of an orchestration of movement that had no end.

The twig beneath the snow — the snow traced with shadows — the shadows pockmarked by more snow falling like soft apples from boughs overhead — and the great blueness above.

On these early morning outings, she had moments now and again of self-forgetfulness similar to what sometimes graced her on stage, when she wasn’t thinking ahead or thinking back, she was living the life of her character, utterly present with the other actors and with the audience. Now her role was something else entirely. It was paying attention to all the life around her that wasn’t paying the least regard to her.”

- Elizabeth Hay, Snow Road Station

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful story, lyrical writing -just so Canadian but in the best possible way. I’m enthralled with an older woman character who is finding her way. The whole concept of coming back to your small town and reconnecting with a life you wanted nothing to do with, is done perfectly. It also was set in a place I know well, and I could picture that whole landscape. There are many different paths one can take in their life, and going back doesn’t mean you’re not going forward. This one will stay with me.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think my enjoyment of this novel depended, in part, on the fact that we drive through Snow Road Station on the way to our cottage. The many local references made the story come to life for me! It was a nice reminder that we can make life changes for the better in our sixties, when we truly come to know ourselves.

[Cheryl Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Theatre, the changing of seasons in a Canadian sugar bush, the mid-life crisis of a strong and witty woman, female friendship, and complicated family ties. What's not to love? This may move a bit slowly for some readers, but I didn't mind strolling rather than running through this world in the company of these characters. The sense of place is wonderful, as it always is with Elizabeth Hay.