The Nowhere Places

“A made-in-Halifax Lives of Girls and Women, Susan LeBlanc’s The Nowhere Places is the novel I’ve been longing to read most if not all of my adult life. This powerful debut is a profoundly moving story about daring to be different in the small, whitewashed city my generation knew growing up—the Halifax of the 1970s as riven by entrenched rivalries as it was (and still is) sustained by tightly-knit families and communities. A city where the boundaries between its working-class North and affluent South End seemed impenetrable, a city where those of modest means lived in quiet desperation chafing against the desire for more. Against this milieu, a time and place as stifling as it was nurturing, LeBlanc’s exquisitely drawn girls and women strive for selfhood, dare to make lives that are fully their own. Just as Alice Munro’s book was a revelation back in those days, so too is LeBlanc’s: I cannot think of a more vivid, truthful portrait of ourselves or of this era and place. Gutting, uplifting, propulsive, The Nowhere Places is a triumph. I love this book.”

–Carol Bruneau, award-winning author of Threshold and Brighten the Corner Where You Are

“In a loving and clear-eyed depiction of North End Halifax at the turn of the 1980s, Susan LeBlanc’s The Nowhere Places immerses us in a time and setting that feels both minutely and beautifully particular, yet deeply relatable and free from the kitsch and sentimentality of nostalgia. LeBlanc writes her characters—both the sensitive, teenaged Lulu, the weary single mother June, and a myriad of memorable, sharply drawn secondary characters—with nuance, compassion, and a telescopic view of the world as it was then that is grounded in the one we know now. LeBlanc’s hilariously funny yet heartbreakingly sad story reflects the tenderness and grit of David Adam’s Richards’s Nights Below Station Street or Heather O’Neill’sLullabies for Little Criminals. It offers a stirring and deeply satisfying story of a community that will keep you turning the page.”

–Becca Babcock, author of Some There Are Fearless

“The Nowhere Places by Susan LeBlanc offers an intriguing glimpse into the lives of two characters living in North End Halifax in the late 1970s. A story that explores the consequences of secrets held close to the heart—the guilt, the shame, and even the regret when those closely held secrets are eventually exposed. Told with compassion and a deep understanding of what motivates her characters, LeBlanc eases the reader through the ripple effect of those touched by the lives of others. A moving portrayal of the courage and the struggle to find one’s own place in the world, no matter what age. A story that tugs gently at the heart.”

–Laura Best, author of Good Mothers Don’t

“Susan LeBlanc has given us a portrait of North End Halifax that is both graceful and gritty. This gentle, understated novel draws us intimately into the lives of ordinary people, with all the love, worries, triumphs, and losses of ordinary lives. I found myself caring very much about them all, especially loving their courage as they try, over and over again, to do the right thing.”

–Anne Bishop, author of Under the Bridge