Kay Darling

by Laura M. MacDonald, Alex Pugsley

What is it about a big city that makes people think they have to know everything? And everyone? What exactly are all those frantic urbanites up to anyway? So wonders Kay Pritchard, an uptight-straight-white-girl from New Brunswick, who is trying to finish a screenplay without losing her bottom-of-the-totem-pole job at the CBC. Meanwhile Claire, Kay's spirited but spiritually disorganized younger sister, is trying to complete her education, but keeps getting waylaid by smarty-pants Ph.D. students with Jean-Paul Sartre glasses, beautiful red-haired dykes with muscles and love-sick painters - not to mention the worry of a possible pregnancy. Then there's Will, a gay actor and Kay's long-time confidante, a talented young thing on the rise until he falls head over heels for a guy who looks "as if he's just fallen from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel." Told through letters, confessional monologues and stream-of-consciousness narratives, Kay Darling travels from Toronto to LA and back again on a funny, moving and lively trip through that time in your life when you're almost grown up, almost successful, and almost broke.

212 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1995

About the author

I was born in Halifax. I've lived in Montreal, Toronto and New York. Consequently, I can no longer remember the preferred pronunciation and sometimes spelling of certain words such as process, route, pasta, cheque etc., but I do know that no one in Canada says aboot. It's more like a-boat.

Here is an explanation I stole from a Yahoo. "Non-CDNS will hear "house" as a 'funny' word, because the vowel 'ow' is followed by a voiceless consonant: s. The vowel changes to the 'uh'-ish sound - as in, 'The criminals house fugitives on a regular basis.' Non-Canadians will not hear 'house' as a funny word, because the vowel 'ow' is followed by a voiced consonant: z. The vowel, therefore, doesn't change.

"The reason that this difference appears to be so major is because the new vowel that is produced does not exist in many other varieties of English. Therefore, when hearing this strange vowel, people who don't use it themselves will try to match it to the next closest one they know, which is 'oo' as in 'boot.' So, Canadians don't actually say 'aboot' and 'hoose,' it just seems like that to the ears of those who aren't accustomed to hearing that vowel."

If you have read and understood all of this explanation, you can be my friend.