Welcome to Litsy!

There's a racist subplot that may or may not indicate Canadians' attitudes as SJD left Canada post girlhood (The specifics, not the racism: that we obviously had). Anyway: you can read this one as a lover of old-fashioned Victorian novels, as one seeking a historical microcosm, as an expat, as one curious about Canadian culture--and I think in all those ways that you would find it interesting (but see above).

50 pages down: you may not need to be Canadian (one way I identify) or even want to learn something about a young country with an astonishingly developed novel-writing culture, as I have always thought. This one draws one in.