February

November 2, 2009
The story of the man who never comes back from sea has been embedded in the lore of eastern Canada. Moore's third work of fiction (after Alligator
) imagines the impact one such disaster—the 1982 sinking of the Ocean Ranger
—has on Helen O'Mara, a mother of three small children whose husband, Cal, dies at sea. The narrative jumps in time from Helen's life with Cal, the accident itself and the years after in which Helen tries to keep her life intact. Whether it is Helen longing for companionship, designing wedding dresses or learning yoga, everything she does is done with a view to Cal. Most scenes are quietly reflective, and Moore's strength is her ability to inject evocative images and expressive tones to otherwise static and overly earnest passages (as in “Is this what a life is? Someone, in the middle of cleaning the bathroom, remembers you tasting the ocean on your fingers long after you're gone.”) There's no plot—the narrative consists of fragments from Helen's life—and while some readers may find the patchwork engaging, the absence of a through-line makes the work meandering.