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Articles

Volume 32, Number 1 (2007)

“Flawed Splendour”: A Conversation with Lynn Coady

Submitted
March 26, 2008
Published
2007-01-01

Abstract

Although undoubtedly influenced by other generations of Maritime authors, Coady’s own writing reflects a deep anxiety about common tendencies to idealize and oversimplify the Maritime region. She discusses her personal experience of regional decline, including her father’s bankruptcy, which informed her interrogation of the bucolic conceptions of Maritime life and notions such as a “blood-soil” tie to the land. This interrogation often takes the form of satire, and is focalized through characters like Larry of the novel Mean Boy and Isodore of Saints of Big Harbour. With works like Strange Heaven, Coady has also endeavoured to challenge the patriarchal underpinnings of much Maritime writing. In all, she has sought to strip away pretence and convention in order to depict life realistically, in its flawed splendour.