Winner of the 1988 Governor General award for fiction, Nights Below Station Street is the first book in Richards’ Miramichi Trilogy. Richards’ stories provocatively evoke time and place – this one capturing the early 1970s of a small mining town in northern New Brunswick where memories are long, secrets are hard to keep and feelings of poverty, struggle, resignation and fierce loyalties permeate the atmosphere of the community. I love Richards’ stories because his characters and their life experiences are so real, and unforgettable. I came away at the end feeling as though I have visited the community in person. On one level, this is a strong coming-of-age story. It really gets to the heart of teenage anger, rebellion, loyalty, insecurity and shame as we watch Adele struggle with her desires to be accepted by her peers, to exert her independence, to desire something better and her conflicting feelings of shame and loyalty for her family. This story also has strong adult themes of marriage, family, unemployment and alcoholism as we witness Adele’s parents face their own struggles: Rita, determined to make the best of her marriage soldiers on while Joe battles against the strong pull of alcohol and the demoralizing effects of long-term bouts of unemployment due to health issues. What I find amazing about this story is that Richards is able to communicate all this strong emotion and mental angst with effortless prose, as though he is merely a transcriber of what he is witnessing. For this reason, I feel that Richards’ stories are, at their heart, worthy stories about the human condition. They are also very much stories of Canada. I believe most Canadian readers with memories of the 1970s will be able to relate to this story, on some level.

If you have never read any of Richards’ works, I can suggest Nights Below Station Street as a wonderful place to start. ( )

Tough bleak book ( )

An unusually expressive writing style, but short on plot. More of a small town character study. ( )