I divide my time, as the book jackets put it, between Quebec and New Hampshire, and, though they border each other, if one were tossed out of a low-flying Piper Twin Cub one would have no doubt which side of the line one had landed on. When you cross from the south, you’re greeted by a sign on the autoroute declaring “SIGNALISATION METRIQUE” followed by “65” with a line scored through it and underneath “100.” I often think, crossing from the north, that they should have a sign on the New Hampshire side displaying a conventionally proportioned woman with a line scored through her and underneath a humongous North Country gal.

I hasten to add I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. Over my years in the Granite State, I’ve grown accustomed to their bulk, and come to find many of them rather beautiful: their size seems to suit the rigors of rural life, and certainly when it’s 40 below at night you want something that will give off a little heat, not some emaciated curly-endive nibbler from the Upper West Side. But there’s no denying the fact that everyone around is very large. Even the small women are large, as I notice from time to time when I bump into one of my more petite New Hampshire neighbors on a shopping expedition in Montreal. Gassing up at the general store in the White Mountains, they seem comparatively cadaverous. Walking down the boulevard de Maisonneuve,