First Fiction Fridays: Hat Girl by Wanda Campbell

What:

Hat Girl (Signature Editions, 2013)

Who:

Wanda Campbell lives in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where she teaches creative writing at Acadia University in view of the highest tides in the world. She has published four collections of poetry: Daedalus Had a Daughter, Grace, Looking for Lucy, and Sky Fishing and her fiction and poetry has appeared in journals across Canada.

Why you need to read this now:

Winner of the H.R. Percey Prize in the 33rd Atlantic Writing Competition, Wanda Campbell poetically captures the voices of the east coast islanders and the rhythms of island life, creating a charming, quirky world seen by a come-from-away. Travel to Atlantic Canada without leaving your comfy reading chair!

*****

Hard-working and sensible Pertice McIlveen, a young Ontario woman who loves Hemingway and hates hats, has never done anything rash before. At twenty-one, she feels on the brink of things but is stuck: she has recently completed her journalism degree, but is working as chef at a chain restaurant called Carnivores in Toronto, which she finds less than fulfilling.

However, things change drastically for Pertice when she receives a mysterious key in the mail and rashly accepts her bold and carefree best friend Es’s offer to drive her to Gannet Island off the coast of New Brunswick to find the door it fits into. There they discover a charming cottage by the sea that has been willed to Pertice by a secret benefactor identified only as PM, on the condition she wears the hats that come with it.

Hesitant to accept the challenge, Es points out that Pertice really doesn’t have much to lose. So she dons her first hat and moves into Honeysuckle Cottage.

Despite Pertice’s initial fears of isolation and loneliness, she soon settles into the rhythms of island life, finding work as a chef and making friends with the locals. Receiving a new hat each month, she continues to seek answers to the mystery of PM but instead finds that wearing the hats has begun to change the way she sees herself and the way others see her.

Pertice finds herself attracting the attentions of two young men, both caught between land and sea. Her obsession with Ernest Hemingway is also undergoing a change as she discovers more about the nature of art, courage, and love. Once guided by the bullfighting maneouvres described in Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, Pertice eventually makes the choices that lead to a new kind of grace under pressure.

*****

Thank you to the publisher, Signature Editions, for sharing this charming book with us. I finished it last night and would recommend it as a thoughtful and unique read.

Tanya

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog