This is an in depth story of a poor but educated family struggling through economic hardships that result from a series of misfortunes: first the father, Charles LeBlanc, loses his decent-paying white-collar job and starts a business selling candy from a truck to the corner stores in the city, but eventually poor health and age leave him ill suited to the physical demands of the job, and business fails as a result. His wife, Claire, who is 25 years his junior, begins to work as a substitute teacher out of necessity and also out of determination that her family should enjoy some degree of prosperity, however limited. The marriage is strained. The story is told in the third person with a shifting narrative perspective; the reader is given, at various times, the thoughts of Charles, Claire, and Nicole, the second eldest child. The tone is wistful and the sadness that permeates will probably produce some tears, but there are also a few screamingly funny scenes of misbehavior on the part of the four children. This novel neither sensationalizes disfunctional relationships nor idealizes family values; it is a clear-eyed portrait of one family's complicated life, a portrait that is always subtly handled, never heavy handed. Candyman is storytelling at its best--emotionally and psychologically astute, it remains always a great novel and never a case history.

This book was a real eye-opener. The author portrays the 1950's and life as it was then. There is a real story behind the images. Excellent book, I would recommend it to anyone in the market for a really good novel.

This fine book reminds me of how the walk through childhood is often through a fog of myths, dreams, and half-truths -- and rugged stumblings over surprising realizations endured in the awful leaving of that place (but Simone Poirier-Bures shows us that we never really do leave it, we just return with more information). This second memoir of Halifax, told with clear and straightforward style, in which the winsome voice of the protagonist is engaging and believable, quietly opens a door into the awesome innocence, longings, fears, confusion and awakenings of the childhood of a creative girl with an inquisitive mind. Readers tenderly seduced into Nicole's world in the first few pages and held there experience the nostalgia of their own childhood as they share the unfolding events seen by Nicole, for her singular responses evoke universal understandings that most can remember in other places in other times. The pages are tight but full of poignant imagery, and the dialogue is clean and true. Most of all, the characters live on the page and make us curious to keep reading. Perhaps there will be a third book about Nicole. I surely hope so.

I loved this book, as well as Candyman, which was published before it and which is also about Nicole but has more in it about her family. I grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the seventies--twenty years after Nicole--but the book nevertheless resonated with my own memories. The author is very good at capturing Halifax's own particular atmosphere and identity--a sense of place that has persisted over the years. What I really thought was great about this book, however, was the psychological insight: Nicole's anxieties, fears, flights of fancy, and revulsions are so convincingly, poignantly, and, at times, amusingly rendered that I was entirely taken back to my own girlhood confusions. I don't think you need to have grown up female in Halifax to enjoy this book, however. The realness of these coming of age stories should, I think, speak to many. The author also includes photographs from the period that are absolutely fabulous!

I just loved this memoir! If you were young in the 1960s, you'll remember. If you are young now, you'll discover the twenty-somethings of 1966. Whether you ever, or never, climbed a rocky hillside in Greece, you'll delight in this sensuous evocation of Crete then and now. Convent-educated, the author danced and flirted. Then came suspicions of dark and scandalous pursuits. Bonus: a terrific afterword about memoir writing! (As a former English teacher, I think that this book would be ideal for class use at both college and high school levels.) That Shining Place is a 10!!