Colours in her Hands

 

Colours in her Hands / Alice Zorn
Calgary, AB: Freehand Books, c2024.
350 p.

This was an intriguing book that I liked for a number of reasons. There's embroidery, there's Montreal, dance, colour and family drama. 

Mina is close to 30 - she lives independently although she has Down's Syndrome. Her slightly older brother Bruno is her legal caretaker, and this responsibility is something he takes very seriously, making sure he is always available when Mina (or her social workers) have an issue - which is often. His girlfriend Gabriela loves Mina, but Bruno's refusal to have a child because of his responsibilities is driving them apart at the beginning of the book. After Gabriela leaves him, he meets Iris, a clothing designer who had come across Mina in a park and discovered her artistic talents. 

Mina "knits" - it's really embroidery, but Mina calls it knitting. It seems to come naturally to her; the colours speak to her and she just knows what to put together. It's an emotional connection. When Iris discovers that Mina has bags full of her embroideries, she sees fame and fortune ahead -- this outsider textile artist needs to be known. But this goal seems to exclude her telling Bruno or even Mina herself about her plans. 

These stories swirl around each other, and include Bruno's work as a prop designer for a small theatre as well as some other side stories. There are questions of how well two people know each other, what kinds of things are revealed or kept secret, and of course ethical questions arise around art and ownership and who has the right to share things. 

The book is fascinating, and Mina's character is strong and compelling (the author says she was inspired by her own sister-in-law). But I did find there was a lot of extra stuff going on that made the book maybe a bit longer than needed. And the ending was a bit off for me; there was a character introduced near the end who had a problematic relationship with Mina and that was never resolved. 

But I did find this so different from anything I've read lately, and it was full of art and music and people who live intense lives and care about things. I'm not sure I really liked any of the characters much, but I enjoyed a lot about this story, and loved the descriptions of Mina and her "colours" as well as Iris' sewing. Other stitchers will understand! I've read Zorn's earlier novel, Five Roses, also a great Montreal novel, and am happy that I was able to finally read this one too. 

(review first appeared on Following The Thread) 

Madame Victoria

Madame Victoria / Catherine Leroux
trans. from the French by Lazer Lederhendler
Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, c2018.
206 p.

I have been meaning to read this for a year, but finally settled down with it last week and read it in just over a day. It's fascinating -- inspired by the real life 2001 discovery of a woman's skeleton in the woods above Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital, a woman who has never been identified, this book then takes on the project of giving "Madame Victoria" a history, a life behind the remains.

She creates 12 potential lives for Victoria, all very different. They start out in a likely way, with women who could conceivably be the right age for the skeleton, and have reasonable trajectories that might have ended with a skeleton in the woods. But the stories quickly get stranger and stranger, leaking into the past and into stories that are eerie and fanciful. Finally we even get Victoria the time traveller from the future, who never returns to her origins. 

Interspersed with these twelve lives are a few interactions with the detective on the case, and the nurse who originally found the bones. They bring you back to the framing story, tying all the varying threads together again. I found that this structure worked really well, and the book flowed no matter how different the life-stories were. 

The writing style is literary and graceful, although there is also a lot of energy in it, and a deep care for all the characters. You can feel that each Victoria is being developed as a person, with complexity and a full character; some more than others, but each feels like a person. 

I thought the concept could either turn out very badly, feeling forced, or, it could create something unusual and intriguing. Fortunately, I found it to be the latter. This book really made me think, bringing out a wide range of women's experience and putting difficult realities in view. There was also some lightness and fanciful storytelling mixed in, and I enjoyed the variety while finding that the tone of the book was consistent and all hung together nicely. This was a satisfying read, and I'm glad I finally got to it!

 

The Watching Cat

The Watching Cat / Pamela Fry
London: Peter Davies, c1960
224 p.

Another Quebec set novel, and this one is a doozy! I picked it up at a local thrift store quite a while ago now, and good thing it was at a thrift store price!

Catherine Ellis, a young woman from Western Canada, is left an old house in Montreal by her eccentric uncle. She arrives at 63 Markham Avenue to find the housekeeper and her daughter, the daughter's creepy hipster boyfriend, and an attic renter all installed.

Does she call her lawyer and evict them all? No, of course not. She lets herself be cowed by them into doing what they want. The boyfriend Eddie comes and goes, and is clearly a gangster type. You can tell that by his ominous behaviour that no-one seems to notice much (except for Catherine) and by his hilariously hep-cat speech patterns. 

"You don't know what you're talking about, baby," Eddie said softly. His hand closed lightly over Moira's. "Play it cool, will you?"

Meanwhile, the attic tenant, Luke Dowling has come to her rescue a number of times already. But he also holds strange parties for his beatnik friends and seems to forget that he lives in her house and that there is anything at all odd happening. The plot is all over the place and Luke goes from neutral to sympathetic to coldly imperious and back again; it's like Fry can't decide if he should be Heathcliff, Rochester, or Henry Tilney. And the set pieces like Luke's party are so, so period. Poor Catherine, a nice young girl from a small town, shows up at this hip party in a homemade green silk taffeta gown like a proper young lady. I have to say that this discussion of the clothing choices for the party was the most interesting part of the book for me!

The mystery itself makes no sense at all, and the final reveal of the fortune that Catherine's uncle has hidden away for her, and where, is so silly, and really not much of a fortune at all. Certainly not worth all the build up. 

Catherine stays holed up in the house for most of the story, even though she has been so looking forward to leaving tiny Logan Falls and moving to Montreal. She barely even takes a walk! When she does walk down to the lawyer's office, though, I could pretty much trace her steps and guess where Fry has located this house of hers. The Montreal setting, despite how little we see of it, is the best part of the book. 

Pamela Fry was born in England but moved to Canada at age 11 and spent much of her time in Montreal. At the time she wrote this book she was living in England again. This was the only edition of this dreadfully confused book -- one that doesn't know if it is a modern gothic, or a psychological drama. She did write one other mystery that used Montreal as a setting; you can find out more about her and her books over at The Dusty Bookcase if you are interested. 

Hospital Corridors, a Canadian Romance

Hospital Corridors / Mary Burchell
Richmond UK: Mills & Boon, 1976, c1958.
192 p.

A second Burchell that I've just finished is also up for a review -- but this time, not because of its social criticism and exploration of post-war values. No, this time it's because I was vastly entertained to discover that this book was set mostly in Montreal!

And I started to wonder if Burchell has been hired by the Canadian Tourism Board for this little travelogue ;) There is a lot of rhapsodic description of the setting, as Nurse Madeline arrives from England to Quebec City, then makes her way to Montréal, and encounters rich Anglo weekends in the Laurentians, country drives to small Quebec towns, a view clear across to the the USA on a clear day from the Lookout on the Mountain, and even a dinner at Ruby Foo's.

The descriptions are delightful, and I could pretty much identify the huge "Dominion Hospital" she works at as the Royal Victoria. And the hotel at which she meets her upper crust English suitor -- for dinner only! -- must be the Ritz Carlton.

The story is fairly predictable though the depiction of Madeline and her fellow young nurses is entertaining and lively. The plot: Madeline's half-sister Clarissa meets a Canadian doctor in their English setting in the mid-50s -- she tells Madeline and their mother Enid that she will likely marry him, so they should all start thinking about moving to Canada together. Madeline, a trained nurse, discovers that there is a training program available for English nurses to work a year in Montreal, so she applies. Then Clarissa throws over her doctor, but Madeline determines to go forward with her own adventure anyhow. And meets a mysterious, handsome doctor on the ship over, who of course turns out to be the one and only jilted almost-brother-in-law.

There are a lot more machinations in the plot to get Madeline and Doctor Nat Lanyon together. Madeleine has another admirer, the charismatic Morton Sanders, her sister's previous employer who hired her to accompany his neurotic mother to Canada aboard the ship, and is  now giving her a bit of a rush. Doctor Lanyon seems remarkably sanguine about Madeleine dating another man for most of the book. It's only when her sister and mother come over for a visit and Clarissa bats her eyes at him once more, never mind that she's now legally married to someone else, that jealousy reveals Madeleine's true feelings to herself, and then, of course, all ends well. As Madeline and Nat declare their love to one another, they also declare their love for the country. This is the ending of the book:

"Stop here for a while, Nat,"she said softly. "I want to look at my little bit of Canada."
He stopped immediately, humouring her, and together they looked out over the darkening city.
"It's beautiful," she said half to herself. "It's beautiful, and now it's my home."
"It's only one corner of your home, my darling," he assured her. "All the years and all the miles are there for us both. From ocean to ocean it will all be your home. Together we'll watch the sunrise in the Rockies, the water come swirling down Kicking Horse River, and the mists clearing from the Valley of the Ten Peaks. You haven't seen more than the smallest beginning of it yet."
"I know. It's so vast one can't quite imagine it even now." She smiled slowly. Then musingly she said, "Canada. They call it the land of the future, don't they?"
"They do. And perhaps they're right." He smiled too then. "At any rate, it's the land of our future."
Then he started the car once more, and they drove at their own pace back to the hospital, secure in the knowledge that tonight, not only Canada, but all the world was theirs.

After that Tourism Board Approved™ conclusion, all I could think of was this.I hope you enjoy!

The Tin Flute

The Tin Flute / Gabrielle Roy; translated from the French by Alan Brown. 
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989, c1945.
389 p.

I finally picked up this classic Canadian novel a few weeks ago. Gabrielle Roy is a favourite author of mine but I'd never read this one, a story of a family living in poverty in St Henri right around the start of WWII.

It read very quickly, though I did find it a lot more event driven than most of Roy's other novels I've read. And honestly, quite a bit more boring because of it. Her other works are more nostalgic tales of the French in Manitoba (based in her own childhood) and I think that connection makes them more compelling for me. 

However! On to this book. It's set in the slums of St Henri, an area of Montreal that is now quite trendy and gentrified. When I lived in Montreal in the 90s, it was still kind of sketchy, but growing more gentrified each year. And now even Pointe St Charles right next door (even more sketchy) is experiencing the same. So reading about the reality of life in the 40s was fascinating. The characters walk the streets, all named, so I could follow them in my head. If you read this and don't know the area at all, I would suggest getting a map, as it's easy to follow them, and discover how small the distances are between streets that are slums and ones that are more respectable. At one point, one of the young men walks up to Westmount, to see the big houses and go to the lookout. I know that he walked right past my old apartment to get there, too. I loved that sense of connection. 

The story opens with Florentine Lacasse exhausted at her job serving at a busy deli counter at the Five and Ten. She's met a young man there, Jean Levesque, who is different and who appeals to her. And to her longing to escape her constrained life of poverty and this crappy job that she must work to support her family. Her father is a dreamer who is constantly losing jobs and her mother just keeps having children. Florentine, as the oldest, contributes the bulk of the family income. But she just wishes that she could catch a break.

She and Jean begin a troubled relationship, an angry one with neither of them fully trusting the other. And he is looking beyond St Henri, even when he meets Florentine, which she doesn't know. As it turns out, his friend Emmanuel meets Florentine with him one day, and instantly falls for her himself. Emmanuel is from a more middle-class area of St Henri, though, and foresees many family problems with this crush. 

These restless and demanding young lives are also shaped by the war, which reaches into St Henri to take many of the men who don't have any other options, despite their resistance to an "English" war. But the army pays well, and it means that they can support a family, so it's hard to say no.

But the book is not all about these three younger people. It also delves into the life and emotions of Florentine's parents. Azarius is always waiting for the next big thing, for their big break, and he never can quite achieve it. He's always dreaming, and always frustrated at having to work for other people. Rose-Anna, meanwhile, is the kind of matriarch who is long-suffering, hard-working, too proud to ask for help, and the emotional cornerstone of the family. She keeps them all going despite her many disappointments and responsibilities. And her family is from the country; there's a fine description of urban vs rural between the two. 

So with all the longings, sadness, ambition, anger and stifled rage at poverty, there's a strong emotional drive to the story. The way it is told is straightforward and linear, and can be a little slow moving, despite the shocking and scandalous events that are also shared in a rather matter-of-fact way. The daily struggle of counting change, trying to calculate expenses, weighing food vs. clothing, moving to smaller and smaller lodgings despite a growing family - it is all there. Their last apartment alongside the train station is covered in soot, and noisy, but Rose-Anna resigns herself to it, as long as it provides a home for her family. 

Florentine finds her salvation, so to speak, not through a new business venture or her own ambition, but the traditional way, through an advantageous marriage. But even that begins in shadow, as she keeps secrets from her new husband and allows him to think romantic inclination led her to accept his proposal. No motivations are clear in this story, they are all tangled up with survival, money, and longing. It's a deeply complex story that grows on you; I think about it more now than while reading it. It's a picture of how systemic poverty affects lives, drawn with detail and realism. And so an important read, even if a little slow going at times. 

One or the Other by McFetridge

One or the Other / John McFetridge
Toronto: ECW Press, c2016
396 p.

I love this series by John McFetridge, featuring Eddie Dougherty. Eddie is a great character, changing and growing from the first book to this one, in which he is about to (maybe) get a promotion and (most likely) settle down with his girlfriend whom we met in book two.

The setting of these books -- Montreal in the 70s -- is fantastic.  I really enjoy his descriptions of downtown and many of the outlying areas, such as the South Shore neighbourhood where Eddie's parents live, for example. The physical setting is a big part of these books and really makes them redolent of this particular place and time. This one takes place leading up to the 1976 Olympics, and the Games, as well as the extensive police presence there, do play a part and also allow commentary on more social issues.

In this novel, Eddie faces a terrible case; two teens were murdered on the Jacques Cartier bridge and then thrown over into the river. (Horrifyingly, in the author notes, he states that this is loosely based on a real case). The case has gone cool, let's say -- not exactly cold, but not a big priority. It's assumed it was suicide. But Eddie's instincts tell him it wasn't. (spoiler alert: Eddie is right). 

Eddie is dealing with a lot. He's desperate for a promotion to Detective but he's starting to think that's it's not going to happen. Office politics, French/English tensions, and a new cop on the team who's a bit of a flashy player make him think that that route is slowly closing for him. He begins to think about working as a desk cop for the remainder of his career, and is slowly coming to terms with the idea. 

Meanwhile, his girlfriend is ready to find herself a steady job as a teacher, which means more changes for them. Eddie is maturing, and thinking about settling down, both into his career and into his relationship. This is reflected and contrasted with both his parents' relationship, and hers. The family dynamics between parents, partners, and siblings are a strong thread in the story, and are really integral to understanding Eddie and his police work.

He also has to learn to work with a female detective from another French police department on the South Shore. She faces many of the same work issues as he does, so they unexpectedly bond and work very well together tracking down the facts of this case, even after being warned off it a bit. Their process was really interesting, and added a new aspect to Eddie's character.

I thought this was a more slowly paced, character driven story than some other mysteries. However, the crime itself is well plotted and really quite heart-wrenching at times. I like the characters and the setting is so convincingly drawn. Montreal really shines in this series. I recommend it.

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Further Reading:

Another Montreal series that uses the city as almost a character is John Farrow's Emile Cinq-Mars series, though it's a bit grittier. It is heavily dependent on the main character, an old-fashioned cop, to drive the story as well.

If you like exploring cities through fiction you might also like McFetridge's other series based in Toronto the good. 

Zorn's Five Roses

Five Roses / Alice Zorn
Toronto: Dundurn, c2016.
320 p.

This new novel was an enjoyable discovery -- it takes place in Montreal, which always catches my attention. And I was pleased to discover that it's set in Pointe St Charles, an area that doesn't get a lot of fictional play (and which is overshadowed by the large illuminated Five Roses factory sign, where the title comes from). It's also an historically depressed area which is now being gentrified, which is clearly reflected in this novel.

But besides that particular setting, there was a lot that I loved about this book. It begins with Thérèse, a young and quietly sullen woman who leaves her cabin in the woods to move to Montreal briefly in the 70s. The repercussions of her brief stay shape the rest of the story, which then moves into the present.

And the present is wonderful. I loved all the characters that Zorn brings into play. We have Thérèse's daughter Rose; we have a youngish couple, Fara & Frédéric who've just bought a house in Pointe St Charles (all they could afford) in which a young man has hung himself previously; we have Maddy, of Polish background, who works at a bakery alongside her Trinidadian friend Yushi (at the Atwater Market - one of my own favourite haunts when I used to live in the neighbourhood); and then we have Leo, a young black homeless man who meets Rose in her art studio. They are all artists or employed in ways that aren't staid office jobs, and the flow of their days feels very natural.

Each of these people are connected, in ways that they don't know about, but that the reader begins to discover. I really enjoy this kind of story, when a group of disparate characters circle closer and closer to one another. While there is a tiny bit of coincidental overload here, it was still nearly perfect. The setting is so strong, and vital to the story. And yet the characters are also extremely interesting; they are well-developed and individual, having their own problems to face and their own differing personalities. I appreciated how each one is recognizable, since sometimes with large casts there are some too-similar characteristics that can confuse.

Because of the complications of the storyline and how each person's trajectory ends up crossing, I can't describe a plot. Basically, they each face a decision and the question of how to live -- and they each end up having to accept someone's help. The way that an unwilling dependence on others is so vital to their happy endings is really quite fascinating. Some may say that no man is an island, but Zorn shows how that works. Even the most incidental interaction can cause ripples in many lives.

This was a very enjoyable, complex read. Great as a virtual trip to Montreal when you can't get there in person.

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Further Reading:

Montreal's multicultural nature is also shown in other novels, such as Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner. While Nikolski is a little more fanciful, it also features a group of young people who don't know they are all connected, and they also wander Montreal (though more in the area of the Jean Talon Market, rather than Atwater).

Saleema Nawaz's Bone & Bread starts out in Montreal and later ranges to the Ottawa area, but it is also very character driven.  The leads are two eventually orphaned sisters who viscerally inhabit their busy Plateau neighbourhood. The book tells a rich story, scented with bagels rather than pastries, in this case.

A Little More Free

A Little More Free / John McFetridge
Toronto: ECW Press, c2015.
256 p.


Labour Day, 1972, Montreal. Eddie Dougherty, a half-French, half-Irish patrolman in a mostly French police force, is angling for a promotion to Detective.

Fortunately for him, but not so much for the victims, he is called to an emergency: a nightclub fire. After it’s all over, there are 37 dead. His level-headed presence at the scene is noted, and he’s asked to take on undercover work relating to a robbery at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. And then he gets assigned to a case investigating the murder of a young American, who turns out to be a Vietnam War deserter.

There is a lot of content about the social conditions at this time, and it is mostly woven in smoothly, though once in a while the detail becomes a bit heavy. But 1970s Montreal is a fascinating time, with political upheaval and the cultural divide shaping daily life, with Expo 67 just over and the Olympics on the way. McFetridge uses Montreal as a character in itself, naming streets and restaurants, bus routes and neighbourhoods. Along with politics, he also weaves in student protest culture, urban development, the mafia, geography, and of course, hockey.

The book takes place during the entire length of the famous 1972 USSR-Canada hockey series, capped off with the legendary Henderson goal — with all kinds of people watching and discussing the Russians’ surprising play. It’s a useful metaphor for something McFetridge is commenting on throughout this whole book: the ways in which we don’t really know those whom we consider our enemies.

Eddie is a great character, full of realistic self-doubts and flaws. But he’s also committed to policing and to helping others. The inclusion of both his family and romantic relationships rounds out his character. He is someone you want to keep reading about – which is great as this is the second book in a series. This title can definitely stand alone, without your having read the first book, though. Both the character and his setting are very strong, and I think anyone who knows Montreal will be especially interested in following Eddie's exploits.

This is a crime novel that explores our past, and shows that people remain much the same no matter where or when we live. The characters are a lively combination of male and female, French and English, police -- and those suspicious of the police. It’s a quick, eventful read, but also explores the inner workings of many of these characters. If you haven’t yet met up with patrolman Eddie Dougherty, pick up this novel and walk the streets of Montreal with him.

(read the first chapter here!) 

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Further Reading:

For more Montreal mystery, try John Farrow's Detective Emile Cinq-Mars series, which strongly evokes Montreal's history, or perhaps even Kathy Reichs' Temperance Brennan books, which are partly set in Montreal and follow a forensic anthropologist's work.