The time is the end of the 1930s, and Ramsey Crome, the narrator of Alan Cumyn’s latest novel, is starved for love and beauty, just as he was physically starved as a POW during the First World War. Nearly 20 years have passed, but he has not gotten over either the war or the brief romance he had with his cousin Margaret in London while on leave before his capture. (The story of this romance, and of Crome’s wartime experiences, forms the backbone of Cumyn’s 2003 novel The Sojourn.)

Crome begins his story by remembering his chilly – in all senses of the word –mid-winter wedding night in a cabin in the woods with the beautiful, puritanical farm girl he met while fishing in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. He alternates his account of their joy-deprived life together with memories of his imprisonment, when thoughts of his cousin saved his life. He makes his living as an illustrator for an advertising agency in Montreal, but feels compelled to paint scenes from the war, as well as the bodies of the women he dreams about.

Both Crome and his wife know their marriage is doomed, just as all signs point toward a similar fate for the current shaky peace. And then cousin Margaret – also rather sadly married – comes to visit during the summer of 1939. The novel ends with a recognition of the accommodations that life forces on people, and of the shadow of war that will once again starve and kill.

Cumyn’s novel is adroitly written, with enough narrative drive to keep you reading. His descriptions of the Quebec countryside are evocative, and his portrayal of adults coming to terms with the lives they have built for themselves is mature and satisfying. The depiction of Montreal seems a little generic, however, as if Cumyn had carefully read Hugh MacLennan’s works set during the same period, but not assimilated the city into his soul. And unfortunately for Cumyn, the book cannot help but be compared with that other recent novel of the First World War, Three Day Road. Sadly, his story is not in the same class.