A Student of Weather

In the dust bowl of 1930s Saskatchewan, charming, careless Maurice Dove, the eponymous student of weather appears on a farm and turns the lives of two sisters upside down. Frugal, hard-working Lucinda captivates Maurice with her beauty while grasping, passionate Norma Joyce captures his attention with her cleverness. The sisters‘ inexhaustible fascination with him shapes the whole of their lives from the prairies to Ottawa to New York City. A Student of Weather is a quiet, beautifully written story of unrequited love, a sisterly struggle for blessing, and, ultimately self-discovery and forgiveness.

A Student of Weather is a car without brakes. No. A Student of Weather is a car without brakes set at the top of a very tall hill. No. A Student of Weather is a car without brakes set at the top of a very tall hill...and someone gives it a push. This is what is was like to read Elizabeth Hay's first novel. It started off easy enough, slow enough, gentle enough, harmless enough. Then, without any warning at all it is careening crazily almost out of control. Impossible to stop. Stopping the read proved impossible, too. I seriously couldn't put it down.

As mentioned before, the story starts out simply. Maurice Dove is a researcher, come to study the weather of Saskatchewan. He stays with the Hardy family - Ernest and his two daughters show more Lucinda and Norma-Joyce. Both daughters, despite being very young, fall in love with Mr. Dove. From there, simplicity comes to a halt. A Student of Weather is a novel full of contrasting themes. While Lucinda is fair-haired, beautiful and virtuous Norma-Joyce is dark-haired, impulsive and outspoken. While both sisters find ways to fall in love with their visitor, both also find ways to hate each other. Even the landscapes within the story are contrasting. Norma-Joyce's childhood prairie home cannot compare to the bustling city of her adulthood, New York City. As time progresses and Norma-Jean grows to be a woman with a child of her own, even her child is a conflicted in personality - both shy and loud simultaneously.

On the surface this seems like a love story - two sisters vying for the affections of a traveling man who loves neither of them. Digging deeper it is a story of betrayal and survival. It is the story of pain and loss and the idea that not every broken heart gets mended. show less

By the end of this book I felt as if I had spent many seasons on the Canadian prairies and endured much harsh weather; as the book covers more than 30 years the passage of time is marked by a multitude of dust storms, droughts and freezing winters. Brrr! Not only does the weather keep changing but the action keeps moving backwards and forwards between Saskatchewan, Ottawa and New York. A bit hard to keep track of at times.

But don’t get me wrong, I liked the book very much and enjoyed my trip to Canada.
The descriptions of the natural environment (the weather, seasons, flora, landscape) are excellent.

"Here you find almost every extreme. The coldest winters and the hottest summers, the longest days and the shortest, the richest soil and show more the poorest, the biggest views of the simplest skies, the least rain, the most wind, the best light and the worst dust in this best and worst of all worlds."

Set in Saskatchewan in the 1930’s the story focuses on two strongly contrasted sisters and their rivalry to win the attentions of a handsome visiting weather expert, Maurice Dove, aged 23. The younger sister, Norma Joyce Hardy is no angel – at times she’s selfish, willful and ruthless, but she has an appealing directness, resourcefulness, a passionate curiosity about the natural world, and a thirst for knowledge, experience - and love. She’s only 8 years old but she becomes ‘imprinted’ on Maurice and spends the next 30 years hoping the love will be reciprocated, but it is not.

"A child falls in love with a man, and the man is seduced by the intensity he has generated. Then his attention shifts to someone else. End of story."

By the end of the novel Norma has outlived her mother, father, sister and brother. She’s glad to have survived, but she’s also gained some insight into her own deficiencies.

Hay writes with intelligence, deft humour and the imagery is often superb. show less

This book is totally mesmerizing. I really couldn't put it down. I was totally caught up in the lives of the two sisters Lucinda and Norma Joyce. The book begins right smack in the middle of the dustbowl 1930's on a Saskatchewan farm. This farm is where Lucinda and Norma Joyce were born, as well as Norma Joyce's twin brother Norman. Times were hard and all the country families pulled together to help everyone out. Norma Joyce's twin brother dies at the age of 2 and her mother when Norma Joyce was a little girl. Her sister Lucinda takes over her mother's chores. A young man shows up at their door one day and that event forever changes their lives. From then on Norma Joyce and her sister are rivals for the affection of this captivating show more young man. This rivalry dogs their relationship forever and changes the course of Norma Joyce's life. And the young man-well he continues on with his own life after he leaves the Hardy girls behind and he's blissfully unaware of the havoc that he has caused. The story covers more than three decades and the setting moves on to Ottawa when Lucinda, Norma Joyce and their father move there. It continues on in New York City where Norma Joyce moves to get away from what she feels is an atmosphere at home that is crushing the life out of her. This is an emotionally intense book to read. Ms. Hay's prose is so succinct and so brilliantly evocative that the story just leaps off the page. And it reminded me that most times people aren't really what they seem to be. The line between good and bad is blurred and no one is ever always good, and in most cases, not always bad either. show less

Elizabeth Hay has this wonderful knack of really embedding you in the location of her novels. One morning, I was so deeply surrounded by 1930s Saskatchewan dust that it was a surprise to see Ontario trees and a lake outside my window when I put the book down.

A lot of the book is about the uneasy relationship between citizens of those two provinces. Norma Joyce Hardy is Saskatchewan: mercurial, productive and yet needy. Maurice Dove is Ontario: sophisticated, confident, self-absorbed.

Loved it.

Yet another re-read. Loved this the first time.

Oh, I still LOVE this book! Elizabeth Hay is a great talent.

"Two sisters fell down the same well, and the well was Maurice Dove."

Acclaimed Canadian short story writer Hay's first novel, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Giller Prize in 2000, is a compelling and highly original debut telling the story of two sisters and the jealousy that irrevocably changes their lives when a young student comes to stay on their father's Saskatchewan farm in the 1930s.

Ernest Hardy is widowed, a single father raising two young girls on the rural prairies, when twenty-something Maurice Dove arrives from Ottawa to study the region's unusual weather patterns. Eight-year-old Norma Joyce, dark, fiercely show more intelligent, and inflicted with early puberty, claims Maurice from the first moment she sees him, albeit unrequitedly. Her sister, the "beautiful, saintly" Lucinda, 17, falls deeply in love. After Maurice leaves and his letters stop coming, Lucinda suffers a two-month-long deep depression.

Seven years later, the sisters cannot forget Maurice. The Hardy family inherits a relative's house and moves to Ottawa, on the same block as the Dove family home. What occurs between then teenaged Norma Joyce and the war-damaged Maurice brings to light a childhood betrayal significant enough to devastate everyone involved. Moving seamlessly through 30 years in Saskatchewan, Ottawa and New York City, Hay's novel offers up just the right combination of melodrama and melancholy. show less

Elizabeth Hay has this wonderful knack of really embedding you in the location of her novels. One morning, I was so deeply surrounded by 1930s Saskatchewan dust that it was a surprise to see Ontario trees and a lake outside my window when I put the book down.

A lot of the book is about the uneasy relationship between citizens of those two provinces. Norma Joyce Hardy is Saskatchewan: mercurial, productive and yet needy. Maurice Dove is Ontario: sophisticated, confident, self-absorbed.

Loved it.