Concordia alumna's first novel explores midlife struggles in Maritimes
Alumna and Concordia creative writing instructor Connie Barnes Rose recently published her first novel, Road to Thunder Hill (Inanna Publications and Education Inc., $22.95). The domestic drama explores the themes of middle age and small-town life in a fictional Nova Scotia farming community.
When her husband takes a job in a neighbouring town, protagonist Trish laments — often with a drink in hand — her failing marriage, aging, her imperfect relationship with her mouthy teenage daughter, and the arrival of her overly friendly but pushy, supposed half-sister from Toronto.
With characters that are grippingly real, the novel was inspired in part by the author’s old stomping grounds of Cumberland County in Nova Scotia. Readers of Barnes Rose’s first book, a short story collection entitled Getting Out of Town, will recognize some of their favourite characters.
“People have told me they’re happy to revisit the characters,” says Barnes Rose, an instructor in Concordia’s Department of English, via phone. The rebellious 20-somethings of her first book are now facing the struggles of midlife.
“Middle age is such a transitional time,” she says. For instance, Trish’s teenage daughter accuses her of being an immature freak and a bitter, old woman — all in the same week.
“I realized my own thinking had changed so much in the 12 years since I started writing the book,” says the 58-year-old mother of two daughters. “But I also felt that my characters had to maintain the concerns of their stage in life, even if I had moved on.”
One of her goals in writing fiction is universality. “I always feel a sense of gratification when someone tells me they can identify with the situation or the characters even if they grew up in a city or had totally different circumstances in their own lives. I think that’s what I really hope to capture – the reader’s willingness to relate to what I’ve written.”
Her authentic voice pulls the reader into her characters’ struggles and the neighbourly warmth and accompanying gossip mill that come with small-town life.
“The novel is a bit of wondering what life might have been like if I’d never left my hometown,” she says.
At 21, she moved with a friend to Montreal for a new start. “A girlfriend convinced me that I should get away because I was really going nowhere — except that I suppose I was gathering research for my first book,” she says, looking back.
She has never lost her fascination for her homeland, however, especially since she has come to view it through an entirely different lens. She eventually met her husband in Montreal and settled down to start a family.
Barnes Rose began her studies at Concordia as a mature student and earned her BA in creative writing in 1992 and MA in English in 1998. She attributes her start as a writer to her alma mater and her adopted city.
“I became a writer at Concordia. I had been encouraged to write in high school, but Concordia is where I took my first creative writing class with Professor Abraham Ram. I was surprised and motivated when he singled out my first story as showing promise,” says Barnes Rose. I continued to be encouraged by teachers all the way through my years as a student.
“I don’t think I would have become a writer if I hadn’t come to Montreal and become involved in the writing community here,” says Barnes Rose, who joined Concordia’s Department of English as a creative writing instructor in 2001.
Having spent most of her adult life in Montreal, she stays connected to both her worlds, returning to her maritime roots during the summer holidays.
Her first story was published in Fiddlehead in 1987 and in 1992 she won the Irving Layton Award for Fiction. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies such as Matrix and Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops.
In 2004, she won the Quebec Writing Competition for her short story “What about Us” as well as This Magazine’s Great Literary Hunt in 2007 for her story “Human Terms.”
Barnes Rose hints that her next project may be a book featuring some of these same characters as they approach older age: “That should be interesting. I imagine there will be a lot of reflection.”
Related links:
• Concordia Department of English
• Book review in Halifax’s Chronicle-Herald
• Road to Thunder Hill
• Getting Out of Town