One Day, Hard and Clear by Anne Baldo
Reviewed by Ian Colford
One Day, Hard and Clear is the emotionally resonant debut novel from Anne Baldo, author of the dazzling short fiction collection Morse Code for Romantics (Porcupine’s Quill, 2023). A mature work that demonstrates significant growth in Baldo’s art, in some respects the novel seems to echo—could even be said to continue—the story collection, as if the author was not yet finished with themes of lost love, emotional betrayal, nostalgia for friendships past and youthful uncertainty over what tomorrow may bring.
“…compulsively readable, shimmering with detail…”
The story begins in July 2004 with best friends Sami and Lucy freshly graduated from high school and working together at Zehrs Supermarket in Windsor, Ontario. At home, Sami’s mother is unreliable and mostly absent, and her father lets her do whatever she wants. Lucy’s ever-watchful mother worries that Sami, with her lip gloss, overdone makeup, cheap clothes, and disreputable boyfriend, might be a bad influence. Lucy and Sami have been friends forever. There are no secrets between them. But it’s clear they want different things. In the fall, Lucy will enter university. Sami has no such plans and seems content to hang out around town, working for minimum wage, frequenting bars, and hooking up with whomever is available. She has recently broken up with the boyfriend, whose name is True. But Lucy’s mother’s concerns are well founded: True comes from a family with a questionable pedigree (his father’s served jail time), and True has been known to throw a rock or two through the odd window. But even though Sami and True are no longer a couple, their emotional connection remains potent. With Lucy gone, Sami—despite plenty of evidence that he does not bring out the best in her—leans on True to help her through the rough patches.
Baldo’s elegant narrative describes the turbulent ebb and flow of Sami and True’s complex relationship over the next several years, as the two engage in other relationships but always seem to gravitate back to one another. The paradox Baldo presents to the reader is that Sami is smart enough to know that True is selfish and controlling, that he will take every opportunity to question her choices and undermine her self-respect, that he represents a damaging presence in her life. She knows that by staying close to him, by taking his advice and following his lead, she will never move forward and learn to stand on her own two feet. But True is also the addiction she can’t seem to shake, the one that allows her to step out of herself and imagine a world that isn’t filled with disappointment, cruelty and bad luck. Even when she’s making choices that on the surface appear to have nothing to do with him, we feel True’s influence at the root of almost everything she does.
The power of One Day, Hard and Clear resides in Anne Baldo’s relentless dissection of her characters’ motivations and the construction of scenes that reveal them taking needless risks and sometimes even acting against their own self-interest, if only to defy expectations or thwart someone else’s wishes. With friendship at the core of the novel, Baldo demonstrates she is adept at depicting that heartbreaking moment when someone realizes a once-cherished friendship is over. Her prose is compulsively readable, shimmering with detail, creating an irresistible flow that carries the reader along. The novel is also filled with wisdom and insight, frequently capturing, in seemingly effortless fashion, naked truths about human relationships that can be breathtaking in their simplicity: “The margin between someone who would save you and someone who would destroy you is not as wide as we liked to believe.”
Anne Baldo has her finger firmly on the pulse of a generation struggling to cross the threshold from adolescence to adulthood. One Day, Hard and Clear presents life how it is, with all its sharp edges intact. The world it evokes is one where people learn their lessons the hard way, and no one gets to take the easy way out.
About the Author
Anne Baldo is the author of the story collection Morse Code for Romantics. Her writing has appeared in Grain, Stanchion, and Riddle Fence. One Day, Hard and Clear is her debut novel. She lives in Windsor, Ontario.
About the Reviewer
Ian Colford has published three novels and two collections of stories. Evidence was published in 2008 by Porcupine’s Quill and won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award; Evidence was also shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the ReLit Award. The Crimes of Hector Tomás followed in 2012. Published by Freehand Books of Calgary, it won Trade Book of the Year at the 2013 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. Perfect World was published by Freehand in 2016 and shortlisted in the book design category at the 2017 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. In 2019, A Dark House was published by Nimbus Publishing of Halifax and was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Prize in Short Fiction at the Atlantic Book Awards and the Relit Award. In 2022 The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard won the Guernica Prize and was published by Guernica Editions in November 2023. Witness, a sequel to Evidence, will be published in 2026 by Galleon Books of Moncton, NB. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. More info can be found at www.iancolford.com.
Book Details
Publisher : Rare Machines
Publication date : June 2 2026
Language : English
Print length : 240 pages
ISBN-10 : 1459756355
ISBN-13 : 978-1459756359