A Family Place

I thought this might evoke the feeling of place for Nova Scotia the way Under a Tuscan Sun did for Tuscany. Instead the emphasis on family interactions and learning to reconnect takes center stage with the actual housebuilding and descriptions of Nova Scotia's land and people merely the stage setting. I applaud his efforts to return from the abyss of emotional bankruptcy and to form new bonds with his children and wife. He gives insight into childhood influences and shows the seductive lure of celebrity status that were pulling the family apart. Although I had wished for more details on Nova Scotia, nonetheless it was a satisfying read.

I have been a fan of Charles Gaines since reading both "Pumping Iron" (which he did in colloboration with famed photographer George Butler) and his novel "Stay Hungry", which was turned into a movie in which Arnold Schwarzenegger had one of his first serious roles. Yet this book is so far afield from anything like his previous work that it stands alone. It is at once a confessional and a tribute, for in this book Gaines articulates what it means to finally recognize how superficial and fruitless his endeavours over a several year period had been, and ho whe and his wife decided to make a last stab at saving their faltering marriage by retreating, en famille, with the rest of their extended family of kids and selected friends, to spend a summer building a summer cottage on the rugged coast of Nova Scotia. The trek proves worthwhile, as does the reading experience, for we find ourselves paging through this day-by day account of how they made it happen, and how they all grew together in a renewed bonding of individuals through the common experience. Of course, not all of us have the resources or time to engage in such a quixotic adventure, yet reading the book made me yearn for the opportunity to engage my loved one and friends in some common enterprise not so much for the acomplishment of the task, but for the opportunity to grow and experence each other and the mutual growth that would occur in such an engagement. That is perhaps a solipsistic method of decribing and endorsing a book for one's fellow readers, but there it is. Like Jack Nicholson's famous line in "As Good As It Gets", it makes me want to be a better man. Enjoy!

I stumbled onto this book as my wife and I were expecting our first child. I now return to it as the pressures of career, family and life in general build up and tear away at me. It is in a package the story of the descent and reestablishment of a marraige, the pressures of the passage of time on a family, and the value of time together and a focusing project. This book has a permaneant home on my bookshelf.