Birdsong, wind: here by the ocean every noise was surrounded by silence
that reached all the way to the stars. Monica studied the white shingled
building above the slope of green lawn, deep bays rising two storeys on
each side of the front door and the windowed porch. You felt the big
rambling construction must have a memory, old thoughts. Listen, I am the
voice of what once was. I am as real as the beating of your hungry
heart. A flash of sun blinded her, a pirouette of the dazzling god.
So begins David Helwig's Saltsea. A lovely, meditative novel, a story
about memory, and about how what once was continues to affect what is
and what will be. It is the story of a place, of the family that used to
own it, and the people who have been its caretakers. Saltsea, a hotel on
the shores of Prince Edward Island, where people come for a brief time,
their lives intersecting in intimate and unforeseen ways. The characters
of Saltsea are finely drawn, with humour, love and compassion. Sadness
and even tragedy are a constant here, but Helwig handles it all
humanely, without sentimentality, and with the control of a writer at
the height of his powers. Saltsea, befitting a novel so concern with
memory, is not something you will soon forget.
