Lord Nelson Tavern

The Lord Nelson Tavern: a Halifax watering hole in the early 1960s. The group of young university students who hang out there—a ramshackle coterie of aspiring artists, economists, poets, and philosophers—come together to gossip and ponder the big questions of art and life, all the while pining after the vain and untouchable Francesca.

Though these friends soon drift apart, their early rivalries, jealousies and conquests will continue to reverberate. In the novel’s seven interlocking sequence...