Review of Hat Girl

Hat Girl

Willingness to change (or not) is a recurring theme in this entertaining debut novel, published by a small Winnipeg-based literary house.

After its protagonist, 21-year-old Pertice McIlveen, discovers a mysterious key in her Toronto mailbox one summer day, she sets out on an eastward journey to find the lock it fits.

Her travels take her to the quaintly named Honeysuckle Cottage on an island off the coast of New Brunswick, where she learns of her inheritance from a mysterious benefactor known only as PM.

The cottage will remain hers so long as she wears its former owner's many hats, literally.

The longer Pertice stays at Honeysuckle Cottage, the more hats she wears -- nine in all over the course of nine months. In that time, she adjusts to island life by learning from her many missteps.

Author Wanda Campbell's character development is extraordinary. A Nova Scotia creative writing professor and poet, she captures the spiritedness of those who live their lives harmoniously with the ebb and flow of the tides, as only a Maritimer can.

Pertice repeatedly faces figurative storm surges, and her resilience is remarkable.

With strength and grace, Pertice carves a place of belonging for herself among the Gannet Island locals. Campbell allows her readers to identify with a struggling writer who idolizes Hemingway because she cleverly uses excerpts and ideas from Death in the Afternoon as anecdotal commentary on everyday life.

Even in its quietest moments, such as a walk to the island's lighthouse or afternoon tea at the local bed and breakfast, Hat Girl resonates because the narrative is so relatable.

Heroes and villains, lovers and lost loves, saviours and the damned, these archetypal figures in our lives determine the hats we all wear.

Influence is all-encompassing, and Campbell illustrates this throughout the novel with Pertice's catalytic hats.

At times she allows circumstances to define her, wearing the hats she has been given. On other occasions, her hats are lost or she gives them to others who need them.

In a moment of clarity she chooses her own hat -- a remarkable feat of self-actualization for a woman who formerly had such an aversion to hats she barely tolerated hairnets.

Campbell has assembled an inspiring collection of triumphs over life's many battles in her first work of fiction, which won the H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize for an unpublished novel in the 2010 Atlantic Writing Competition.

Throughout Hat Girl she demonstrates that when the time comes for a tête-à-tête, all one truly needs is the right hat. Hats off to her!


— Jennifer Pawluk Winnipeg Free Press

More Reviews of this title

Hat Girl

Winner of the H.R. Percey Prize in the 33rd Atlantic Writing Competition, Wanda Campbell poetically captures the voices of the east coast islanders and the rhythms of island life, creating a charming, quirky world seen by a come-from-away. Travel to Atlantic Canada without leaving your comfy reading chair!

*****

Hard-working and sensible Pertice McIlveen, a young Ontario woman who loves Hemingway and hates hats, has never done anything rash before. At twenty-one, she feels on the brink of things but is stuck: she has recently completed her journalism degree, but is working as chef at a chain restaurant called Carnivores in Toronto, which she finds less than fulfilling.

However, things change drastically for Pertice when she receives a mysterious key in the mail and rashly accepts her bold and carefree best friend Es’s offer to drive her to Gannet Island off the coast of New Brunswick to find the door it fits into. There they discover a charming cottage by the sea that has been willed to Pertice by a secret benefactor identified only as PM, on the condition she wears the hats that come with it.

Hesitant to accept the challenge, Es points out that Pertice really doesn't have much to lose. So she dons her first hat and moves into Honeysuckle Cottage.

Despite Pertice’s initial fears of isolation and loneliness, she soon settles into the rhythms of island life, finding work as a chef and making friends with the locals. Receiving a new hat each month, she continues to seek answers to the mystery of PM but instead finds that wearing the hats has begun to change the way she sees herself and the way others see her.

Pertice finds herself attracting the attentions of two young men, both caught between land and sea. Her obsession with Ernest Hemingway is also undergoing a change as she discovers more about the nature of art, courage, and love. Once guided by the bullfighting maneouvres described in Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, Pertice eventually makes the choices that lead to a new kind of grace under pressure.


First Fiction Fridays, Literary Press Group of Canada

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