Set on a small island off the coast of Newfoundland, Beverly Stone’s first novel is a melancholy tale. The narrative follows two teenage girls who aspire to move to Toronto and start their lives anew: Wanda Stuckless, a petty drug dealer and the reluctant head of a severely damaged household, and her best friend, Bride Marsh, the prettiest girl in town. It is the summer after high school, and skipping town isn’t as simple as they’d hoped. The girls tarry, and before they know it, they’re both entangled in relationships that keep them on the island. As these develop, their attachment to each other fades.

There are plenty of interesting relationships in the novel, though almost all of them are dysfunctional. The men are drunk, mean, deaf, or absent, the women medicated, repressed, or isolated. It is only the young people who offer any hope, and most of them seem likely to follow in their parents’ footsteps.

Stone’s prose is detailed and engaging, and she certainly has an ear for dialogue. The author, herself born and raised in Newfoundland, catches the idiom, poetic phrasing, and cadence of the vernacular. (“‘Oh my blessed fuck,’ said Wanda, dropping her bag. ‘Mom, look at the Jesus mess, will ya?’”) She writes the teenagers especially well, and communicates with aplomb the distinct angst and anxiety of adolescence.

The novel shifts in narrative perspective – not only between the two young women, but among other people on the island. It’s a fitting choice for a work set in a place where so much history is shared. Yet for a place so small and bound together, there is also a great deal of loneliness and alienation on display here. In fact, there is very little beauty on the island – not in the landscape, and not in the relationships. If it weren’t for Stone’s vibrant prose and carefully constructed plot, No Beautiful Shore might have buckled under the weight of its own sadness.