With her future all but sealed, Crow decides to go down in a blaze of unforgettable glory by writing a memoir that will raise eyebrows and drop jaws. She'll dig up "the dirt" on her family tree, including the supposed curse, and uncover the truth about her mysterious father, who disappeared a month before she was born.
But first, Crow must contend with an eclectic assortment of characters, including her gossipy Aunt Peggy, hedonistic party-pal Char, homebound best friend Allie, and high-school flame Willy. She'll also have to figure out how to live with her mother and how to muddle through the unsettling visual disturbances that are becoming more and more vivid each day.
Stacey was almost 40, living in Toronto and working for a marketing firm when she discovered she had brain tumours. Having just broke up with her fiancé, she needed someone to take care of her as she was dying so she headed home to rural Cape Breton and moved in with her mom, Effie, in her trailer. Effie works long hard hours as a cleaning lady in a motel and outwardly doesn't have a lot of time or patience for Crow (as Stacey is known at home) feeling sorry for herself. But as we get to know Effie, we find out she really is a caring woman.
Crow doesn't have a lot of support around her. Allie, her best friend, has been living in Halifax taking care of her dying mother. Char, another good friend, has been traveling the world having wild adventures and arrives home with a baby whose father was a murdered Congolese criminal. Peggy, her mother's sister, is a gossip. Willy is an old flame from high school who has a garage and sells weeds on the side. Her father disappeared about a month before she was born and his well-to-do family has never acknowledged her so Effie raised her as a single mom.
This sounds like a dreary story but it was actually amusing and quirky for the most part. I wanted to like it more than I did but it fell apart for me around the 80% point when it took some some weird turns which was disappointing. It's written in first person perspective in Crow's voice. As a head's up, there is swearing.
I lived in Cape Breton in my teens so could relate to some of the places and expressions. For a time, I lived in the general area where Effie's trailer was (on the Bras d'Or Lake). "Town Town", which was the nearby city is really Sydney (where I lived) and "Bayflower Mall" is really the Mayflower Mall in Sydney. There were references to the "Butterscotch Palace", which was a psychiatric hospital in Sydney and has since been demolished and not far from where I lived.
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