On the Rocks

Peter Unwin’s Written in Stone begins at the end. Linda Richardson is driving an aging Westfalia van on one last journey from Toronto to Northern Ontario to scatter her husband’s ashes. Years before, when she first met Paul Prescot, he was “a sullen older man who cast an atmosphere of sullen disapproval.” He approached her at a party and asked if she was any good in a canoe — along the way, he explained the etymology of the word and quoted T. S. Eliot (he even inquired if she got the reference). Despite the shaky start, she agreed to go with him. Is this a story of identity? Or is it a send‑up of pretensions? Either way, Linda and Paul come together as a pair of restless souls paddling along the Grand River.

Their marriage has its difficulties. There are fights and infidelities, but also tenderness, and a sense of the two of them against the world. Linda is younger...