The Skating Pond is the second novel from Canadian writer Deborah Jay Corey, now settled in an American coastal village. Her first novel, Losing Eddie, was awarded the WH Smith/Books In Canada First Novel Award. A coming of age story set in Stonington Harbor, a coastal Maine town, The Skating Pond follows in the footsteps of Losing Eddie’s unremitting bleakness.

The novel follows Elizabeth in her 15th year, a period that includes the death of her mother, the exile of her older sister, the decampment of her father (an amateur painter), and her romantic involvement with a visiting artist. That Elizabeth eventually finds contentment does little to alleviate the darkness of much of the book, and readers may find the resolution less than convincing.

Corey skillfully captures the tones and pacing of life in the small fishing village. From the casualness of death on the sea to the rhythms of mourning and recovery, and from the darkness of winter solitude to the joyful abandon of the titular skating pond, she renders these lives with an easy and convincing intimacy.

The imagery is often clichéd and heavy-handed, though. The novel’s opening line sets the tone: “Sometimes I see my mother skating across the pond with her arms like outstretched wings.” Elizabeth’s narrative voice is too much to bear. Though at times she demonstrates a crispness and clarity suited to the wind-swept crags and her down-to-earth upbringing, too often she speaks in turgid, overwrought bursts, the sort most teenage girls would be embarrassed to write in their diaries.

The Skating Pond does manage to capture the fraught character of love both familial and romantic, and its story, though vaguely unresolved, is suffused with yearning and loss.