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    Liberty Street: A Novel
    Liberty Street: A Novel
    Liberty Street: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    Liberty Street: A Novel

    Written by Dianne Warren

    Narrated by Charlotte Anne Dore

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    While gridlocked in the churchyard of a small Irish town, the traffic frozen in place for the funeral of a young mother and her infant, an unbidden thought comes to Frances Moon. "I lost a baby when I was nineteen." She is surprised by how easily the long-suppressed memory slips into her consciousness, and by her own voice as she speaks the thought aloud to Ian, her partner of twenty years.
    The next morning, Ian is gone.
    Numbed by abandonment, Frances sets out for the small town in Canada where she grew up-and where she began to make many poor choices. The novel flashes back to Frances as a curious, imaginative, and well-loved little girl who begins to lose herself once forced from her family's idyllic farm and into school. As she withdraws, only two people offer comfort: Dooley Sullivan, a prankster, and Silas Chance, an Indian who works at the lumberyard, and the Moon family's new tenant. Silas dies violently, the victim of a hit-and-run. And at the site there is evidence the driver stopped but did not help. In such a small town with the usual racial prejudices, the case is never solved. But years later, on the evening of her marriage, Frances remembers who the driver was.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 16, 2016
    ISBN9781515976301
    Liberty Street: A Novel
    Author

    Dianne Warren

    DIANNE WARREN is the author of the Governor General’s Award–winning novel Cool Water, as well as the novel Liberty Street, three books of short fiction and three plays. Her play Serpent in the Night Sky was short-listed for a Governor General’s Award for Drama. She is the recipient of the Marian Engel Award for a female writer in mid-career, and the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. Warren lives with her husband, a visual artist, in Regina, Saskatchewan.

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    Reviews for Liberty Street

    3.5/5

    28 ratings16 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Ordinary people, extraordinary writing. I loved this. It was slow paced, yet completely mesmerizing as the author gradually builds up the tension around each set of characters. I'd happily read a sequel if there was one!
    • 5/5
      I love when a book surprises me; when I open the pages and fall into a story that swallows up time and takes me some place I have not been before; when I meet characters who touch my heart and teach me something about life. Cool Water is one of those books. Set in rural Saskatchewan, the novel brings to life several characters who are interconnected because they share the same small town. Warren is a renowned short story writer, and it is easy to see those roots in Cool Water. The novel has the feel of linked short stories. It reminded me of Elizabeth Strout’s wonderful novel Olive Kitteridge with one big difference: Strout’s book uses the minor characters to give depth to Olive, the protagonist; Warren, on the other hand, fully develops each character in alternating chapters in order to give life to the town of Juliet in which they live.The novel opens with a one hundred mile horse race (which we later learn is part of the history of the town). We are then introduced to several characters as the story unfolds over the course of one day: Lee, a young man who is seeking to understand his biological roots after he inherits a family farm; Blaine and Vicki Dolson and their six children (including the teenage Shiloh) who are struggling financially; Willard Shoenfeld and his sister-in-law Marian who struggle to communicate their love for each other; Norval, the town’s banker, and his wife Lila and daughter Rachelle who is preparing to marry the father of her unborn baby; and Hank Trass, a retired rodeo cowboy, and his wife Lynn who is still trying to come to terms with Hank’s long ago infidelities.Each of the characters is flawed and struggles with their own self worth, identity, or relationships with each other. United by the harsh and awesome landscape of the desert, they navigate the pitfalls of life and seek to realize their dreams. Often they are caught off guard by unexpected events, or find themselves detoured by misunderstandings. I was especially drawn to Willard and Marian, an odd couple who find themselves together after Willard’s brother (and Marian’s husband) Ed dies. Nine years have passed since Ed’s death, and Willard and Marian have lived under the same roof, moving forward in their lives side by side, yet apart. Their fumbled communications are poignant and compelling.He goes back outside and gets in his truck and drives away from the yard. Toward town. The Oasis. He’ll go to the Oasis for supper. They’re used to him there. He can sit at a table and eat his meal and probably no one will talk to him, but if someone does, it will be about the weather, or grain prices, or football. And he won’t have to hear the words, I’m leaving, Willard. I though you’d better know… – from Cool Water, page 242 -Warren’s writing is subtle, intuitive, and richly rendered. Her characters are real people and part of the tapestry of the setting. Warren understands how where we live reflects who we are – and she seamlessly weaves the landscape through the stories of her characters. She also brings in the connections between people and animals – something which resonated with my own experiences with the animals who have passed through my life. Blaine (a man who is struggling to keep food on the table for his family) finds his horse suffering from colic and must decide whether or not to spend the money on a vet or simply put the animal out of its misery – the decision is not just about whether or not the horse will be saved, but it is a reminder of where Blaine is in his life and the hope (or lack of it) for things to get better.Blaine knows what he has to do. It’s not that he’s never had to put a horse down before, but this horse – the last one – now represents every ambition that he’s ever had and his last bit of hope, however unreasonable, that things might turn around. – from Cool Water, page 224 -Cool Water is an exquisite novel of every day life which includes the disappointments, challenges, and small joys we all encounter. At times funny, but always sensitive, Cool Water is a book that tenderly explores the connections between people, and reminds us of the common threads of human experience which join us.Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Often I will sit and peruse the cover of a book before opening it and starting to read, wondering what connection the cover has to the story inside. I love the feel of diners and those postcards promised a good story....Cool Water takes place in tiny Juliet, Saskatchewan over the course of two days. In rotating chapters we follow the lives of a few of the inhabitants. Lee was a foundling, taken in by the Torgesons. They've passed on and he's now alone on the farm they've left him, unsure of himself and his place in life. Blaine and Vicki Dolson have six children - and a truckload of debt. Local banker Norval Birch has always followed the rules, but begins to question what he's really accomplished in life. Willard and his brother's widow Marian have shared the same house for nine years. They are unable to identify and act on the fact that they love one another. Lynn questions her husband's faithfullness when she finds a woman's phone number in his pocket.None of these scenarios are earth shattering, but that is the genius behind Cool Water. There's nothing special about the characters - they're just everyday people trying to do the best they can. We become privy to the happenings behind closed doors, the feelings, emotions and memories of the characters. Dianne Warren's prose are simple, yet eloquent and aching. The inhabitants and the town of Juliet are so clearly drawn, I had very defined mental images of both. Warren has captured the feel of small town perfectly. Living near a town of the same size, I found myself walking down Main Street the other day, looking at those I met on the sidewalk just a little bit differently. Tying many of these stories together was a horse, both present and from the past. The horse is prominent in Lee's journey as he unwittingly recreates a hundred mile ride from the past. Lee's story touched me the most of all the characters. I was surprised by the redemption of Norval's wife Lila. At first she came across as distinctly unlikeable, but as events unfolded I was caught off guard by her reaction. But Vicki was another character who I related to - the thought of cutting and blanching bushels of beans is daunting, yet I too do it year after year. Warren was a Canadian author new to me, but one I encourage you to discover. An absolute five star read.
    • 4/5
      This book gradually increased my interest as I got to know the characters more, and there's plenty of characters to get to know. The reader doesn't become deeply involved in any one character and there's little action or suspense. The book is set in and around a small town in Canada, probably around the turn of the century (from 20th to 21st!). I can see why a couple of people gave this a very low rating - the lack of an apparent focus would really trouble some readers. However its real focus is on the web of connections between people who make up this community. Despite the geographic context being so different from my own urban Australian one, I found plenty of relevance to my own life to reflect on.
    • 4/5
      Juliet is a small town (just over 1,000 people) in Southern Saskatchewan, near Swift Current. This book follows some of the town residents (and local farmers) for one day. We meet Lee, who has taken over his “family” farm (we learn early on, that Lester and Astrid were not his biological parents); Norval, the town banker, whose daughter, just out of high school, is pregnant and is getting married… neither she nor her fiance are particularly responsible; Blaine, whose farm has failed and he is having trouble making ends meet for him and his family, including six children; and more. I really enjoyed this. I grew up in a small town/farming community in Southern Sask, and loved reading about the area, though this town was meant to be (I believe it’s a fictional town) just north of the Trans-Canada highway by the sand dunes, whereas I lived a ways south of the highway. Either way, it’s not fast-paced, but I was drawn in and interested in the characters, anyway. It actually reminded me a bit of Kent Haruf’s books and his small town characters. It does switch between characters quite frequently, but – for the most part – I was able to fairly quickly figure out who was who and whose perspective we were getting each time.
    • 3/5
      It's always interesting to me when people living in ways that are clearly at odds from the way I live are so much more similar than they are different. I've been reading a few other books lately that go back and forth among the characters in the way she did, almost creating free standing short stories that then come together into a whole. It works well to give you a flavour of Juliet as a small town. Nice.
    • 5/5
      Dianne Warren's debut novel is a captivating story set in and around the fictitious prairie township of Juliet, Saskatchewan. The story starts out in what I guess to be the early 1900's where a 100 mile horse race between two ranch cowboys occurs on a dry, hot August day. The tale of the horse race 100 years previously merely sets the background for what is to follow. Told through a series of connected stories and divided into 8 parts, the book follows the lives of a handful of local residents over the course of one hot, dry ordinary 24 hour period - from midnight to midnight. The reader is invited to see inside the complicated lives of the characters of Warren's creation: the young farmer Lee Torgeson, raised as a foundling and now left to manage the farm on his own; the drive in theatre owner Willard Shoenfeld and his quiet sister-in-law Miriam; farmers Blaine and Vicki Dolson and their six children struggling to make ends meet with a farm buried in debt; bank manager Norval Birch and his wife Lila who are not seeing eye to eye on the planning of their pregnant daughter's wedding; and farmer Hank Trass, who's helpful neighborly ways cause his cafe owner wife Lynn to have bouts of jealousy. Warren bounces from character to character at the start of the book with each new chapter introducing the reader to the group and then revisits the characters in a similar fashion over the course of the 24 hour period, allowing the reader to get inside the characters as they grapple with issues, indecision, worry and reflection. The characters are so richly crafted they leap off the pages of the book, almost as if they are shouting "Hey, look at me, I want to tell you something." Warren's prose and writing style is in keeping with the setting for this story - a slow, even manner in tune with the dry, hot prairie weather where cloudless skies go on for miles and time has its own pace.I loved this story and was sad when I reached the last page and knew that my visit with the residents of Juliet was over. This is a book I highly recommend!
    • 5/5
      This cool and still story of the fictional prairie hamlet of Juliet, Saskatchewan for a 24-hour period one August won the Canadian Governor-General’s Award for Fiction in 2010. The ‘Welcome’ sign to Juliet announces a population of 1,011 people but more than you can imagine happens here.Warren draws a selection of the townspeople in a clear and sure voice.Her prose has been described as “leisurely and unpretentious” and like a “drink . . . from a deep well after crossing the parched sand hills of the west”. This is one of the books that you will finish and then sit back and realize that much more happened than you thought was happening.It’s a richly rewarding read.4½ stars
    • 4/5
      A well written portrayal of a number of families on a particular day in a small farming community in Saskatchewan. All of the people are struggling with one problem or another and their lives intertwine. The characters captured my empathy and affection to the point that there were times I didn't want to read the book because one of their behaviors was angering me so. A very good book with a touching portrait of the struggles of everyday life.
    • 5/5
      It's not often one picks up a book on a whim and comes out absolutely mesmerized. Yet, this is exactly what this book did for me: the incredible ability for Warren to pinpoint the details that make the characters come alive, the weaving of characters in and out of the book which gives it a movie-like quality it's so well staged, the poetry of the exotic and heroic in the most banal places - I was positively drawn by all the characters, their questions, their silences, their hopes. The pace is slow and can make the beginning a bit tough to master, but once the reader is drawn into the story, there is no pulling out.
    • 5/5
      Journal Entry 2 by winggypsysmomwing at Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada on 10 March 2011It's a hot dry summer in Juliet Saskatchewan, a small town near the TransCanada Highway. And nothing ever happens in Juliet, right? Wrong! Cool Water is about just one day and there is plenty going on. Lee Torgesen looks out his window to find a beautiful Arabian horse in his farmyard. Willard Shoenfeld thinks his brother's widow is getting ready to leave but he couldn't be farther from the truth. Blaine and Vicki Dolson are fighting hard to keep the family farm. Hank Trass lets a note fall out of his pocket with a woman's phone number on it and his wife is sure that he is cheating on her. The town banker, Norval Birch, is worried that his daughter's upcoming marriage is headed for disaster.I grew up just outside a small town on the prairies and I recognized these people. I also remember those long hot dry summers when time seemed to drag and nothing was happening. Dianne Warren has captured the essence of small towns and rural areas on the prairies. Truly deserving of the GG.
    • 3/5
      This book was ok. I like canadiana so I thought I'd give it a go. Not too memorable.
    • 4/5
      Out of the blue, middle aged, Frances Mary Moon lets loose a secret that she has kept from her boyfriend for the entire 20 years they have been together. She once had a baby, and that baby died. What's more she once had a husband that she never divorced, and he was not the father of her child.

      Through flash backs we relive Frances's childhood with her, and follow her into young womanhood and throughout middle age. How could she just step out of her life and start a new one while pretending the old never existed? Well it may have had a lot to do with her mother, who was all for putting unsavory matters behind you and pretending they never happened.

      This was a thought provoking story that often had me wondering what choices I would have made had I been in her place. I was deeply engrossed in these pages from start to finish.

      I received an advance copy for review
    • 3/5
      This book tells the story of Frances, who one day blurts out a secret to her long-time partner, Ian. Something from her past that she never intended to tell a soul. This secret has ramifications on her relationship with Ian. It also motivates her to go back to the small town she came from -- both in fact, and in her memories. It's well written and engaging, but I struggled to identify with the character and couldn't really understand what motivated her.
    • 3/5
      While on holiday in Ireland with Ian, her common-law partner of 20 years, 60-ish Frances Moon lets slip a profound and telling truth about herself: a secret so closely guarded and with origins so deep in the past that she’d believed she’d escaped it. Once it is out, however, the secret resonates painfully into the present. Back home in Saskatchewan, she and Ian fail to reconcile, and in order to deal with the ghosts that have never actually stopped plaguing her, Frances is compelled to pack up the life she’s spent forty years constructing and return to her home town of Elliot. In Elliot she takes up residence in the house that her uncle had built more than fifty years earlier, still the only house on Liberty Street, a failed development separated from the main part of town by the railway tracks, with the intention of finally sorting through the family belongings and mementos that fill the place. Warren devotes the bulk of her novel to flashbacks that depict in highly dramatic fashion the childhood and adolescence of Frances Mary Moon, an imaginative and curious child growing up on a dairy farm with her pragmatic father and idealistic mother. Central to the story is Frances’ relationship with her mother, Alice, who is determined that Frances better herself through education and escape from Elliot, where a dreary, demoralizing, back-breaking future as a farmer’s wife surely awaits. Frances is smart but wilful. She defies her mother at every turn and on many occasions, does precisely the opposite of what her mother has asked her to do. Finally, on the cusp of adulthood, rebellious to the end, she makes a life-altering mistake that she spends the next forty years trying to put behind her. The story that Warren tells is vivid and wistful. Her characters are filled with regret over their rash actions, connections not made and words left unsaid. Often moving, it is also told with wry humour. Liberty Street is a more than worthy follow-up to Dianne Warren’s GG Award winning novel Cool Water and is sure to satisfy any reader looking for a full-blooded novel about human relationships and the past that haunts us all.
    • 3/5
      Liberty Street by Dianne Warren is a recommended novel about a woman confronting her past.Frances Moon, a woman "nearer 60 than 50," is on a vacation in Ireland with her partner of 20 years, Ian, when she blurts out two secrets she has been keeping from him since they met: She had a child who died when she was 19 and she is still married to another man, if he is still living, although he wasn't the father of the baby. Understandably, Ian is upset and heads home to Canada. Frances follows him back to Canada. After a few tense days, Ian tells her that she is a person who resists happiness before he leaves on what may or may not be a business trip. Frances decides to quit her job and head to Elliot, the small town in northern Saskatchewan where she grew up. The story then shifts back in time to when Frances was a child in the 1960's growing up on a dairy farm with her parents.Liberty Street is extremely well written. Warren deftly establishes the time periods and settings with skill. You will feel what life in a small rural town in Saskatchewan was like for Frances and others. The characters are well developed, including secondary characters. However, Frances's past story unfolds with great restraint and none of the characters are highly emotional.While Frances is a well developed character, she is also an unlikable character who seems to go through life sabotaging herself, lacking any ambition beyond rebelling, denial, and escapism. After making mistakes, (which we all do, especially when young) she didn't seem to learn or grow as a person from them. Perhaps the disconnect I felt toward to her character is because Warren doesn't allow Frances to share her motivations for many of her acts. It's okay to have an unlikable character, but for most readers to connect with these broken people, we need a glimpse of some kernel of truth, some admission of her motives, her mistakes.Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of the publisher for review purposes.