Lesley Choyce

I always go into reading multiple author story collections with only moderate hopes for the quality and for the interest I will have in each story. So I was surprised and very pleased to enjoy every single one of these, most of which are by authors I haven’t read before, though I have heard of them. I have to confess that I do have a story in here myself, but I am not including it in my rating because that would seem a bit, well, prejudiced.

Lesley Choyce has done a great job with this selection. So glad to have this one on my shelf.… (more)

School pisses Colin off; so do his teachers who view him as a troublemaker. But what really pisses him off are the bullies who get away with it because no one wants to break the code of silence that the bullies rely on. When Colin interrupts Liam and Craig picking on an old man during lunch break, the vice principal catches the tail end where the old man yells at Colin and he gets in trouble for it. He also winds up on Liam and Craig’s hit list and a photoshopped, nude photo of Colin winds up on GoofFace. Colin could handle that because the body wasn’t even his and anyone would see that. But when pictures of his female friends begin appearing and Emily, a fellow outcast, tells him that she thinks Liam and Craig did it to retaliate for the girls turning them down, Colin feels he has to do something about it and considers defying the unwritten social rules of no snitching. The unwritten code is so pervasive in the school that even the vice principal accuses him of ratting when he comes to tell him what is happening. This book for reluctant readers provides a realistic portrayal of timely topics including cyberbullying, sexual harassment, and school violence.… (more)

Lesley Choyce has been a mainstay on the Atlantic Canadian literary scene for decades. The author of 100 books, he has written and published in every genre imaginable. He has won and been shortlisted for numerous regional and national literary awards, operates a publishing house, held teaching positions at Dalhousie University and other institutions, and worked as a television presenter. He is an environmentalist, a humanitarian, a surfer, a husband and father, and a tireless advocate for Atlantic Canadian writing and writers. Though a Canadian citizen since 1983, he is American born, having emigrated to Canada in his late twenties and adopted Nova Scotia as his home. These details are relevant when considering Saltwater Chronicles: Notes on Everything Under the Nova Scotia Sun, which collects newspaper columns he wrote over the period from 2014-2017. Lesley Choyce candidly and unapologetically mines his own life experience for material, and the stories he tells in these pieces are, without exception, entertaining, instructive, poignant and filled with wry observations and self-deprecating humour. Family life, home improvement, government incompetence, surfing, chopping wood, drilling wells, struggles with illness and physical decline, are all up for discussion. The word “chronicles” from the book’s title hints at a preoccupation with the passage of time, and a theme that he returns to again and again is aging. A New Jersey native, born in 1951, Lesley arrived in Nova Scotia in 1978: an educated, inquisitive, idealistic young man with long hair and few possessions looking to escape the clamorous pressure-cooker of life in urban USA. Those days might be long gone, but Lesley retains that idealism, that love of and respect for nature, and the wide-eyed faith in the essential goodness of humanity that spurred him on his quest more than 40 years ago and sustained him through good times and bad. In Saltwater Chronicles he talks freely about the past but does so without regret. For sure, some of the articles strike a nostalgic note, but Lesley is accepting: he does not obsess over lost opportunities and he never complains about getting old. The most vivid and deeply affecting writing in the book concerns family: the death of his father, his wife’s bout with cancer. These episodes provide glimpses into the man’s heart and soul, and what we see is someone who is generous, loving and kind, and whose greatest wish is to leave the world a better place. We are fortunate and should be thankful that in 1978 Lesley Choyce chose to make Nova Scotia his home. Everyone who knows him, or been influenced by or learned from him, would agree that his abiding good humour, optimism and compassion have made Nova Scotia a better place to live, work and write.… (more)