A JOURNEY THROUGH CANADA'S FORGOTTEN, NEGLECTED AND SUPPRESSED WRITING
Day fourteen of Women in Translation Month and I've yet to participate. What with car troubles, appliance breakdowns, other unforeseen expenses, and health issues (not mine), it has been a summer of distractions. All is capped by the most violent and most frequent thunderstorms I've ever experienced. The most recent passed not two hours ago. In lieu of a review, I present something light.…
Tuesdays begin like any other day. I rise before the sun, make a carafe of coffee, then return to bed to read The New York Times on my laptop. My wife has made me promise to wake her with news that Donald Trump is dead. The Environment Canada website is next, followed by The Globe & Mail. I then take a tour of my favourite book blogs. On Tuesdays I make a point of visiting That Artsy Reader Girl .…
Shackles Madge Macbeth New York: Waterson, 1927 282 pages The first three pages of Shackles take the form of a letter written by the author to her friend Aimée. Do not read it before the novel itself! It contains a doozy of a spoiler. Shackles is the sixth of Madge Macbeth's thirteen novels and has a novelist as its main character. This was almost enough for me to set it aside. Are novelists…
The Living Idol Robert Switzer New York: Signet, 1957 128 pages Robert Switzer's second book, The Living Idol is a novelization of a Hollywood film. I read a lot of these in my youth; Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), Earthquake (1974), The Omen (1976), It's Alive (1977), Star Wars (1977), and Damien:…
Margaret Laurence was born one hundred years ago today. Is recognition appropriate in a blog devoted to Canada's forgotten, neglected, and suppressed writing? I'd say so. Laurence was popular and celebrated in her day and remains so today, yet she was also a lightning rod for censors. Leading the charge was Reverend Sam Buick of Peterborough's Dublin Street Pentecostal Church, who considered The…
The Tent of the Wicked Robert Switzer New York: Signet, 1956 128 pages We begin in a despot's bedroom. Six soldiers enter, one throws the light switch, and the country's president is ordered out of bed. His mistress is a sound sleeper. This is the end of the Small Man's rule. He'd been expecting it. Where readers expecting it? In June 1949, on the occasion of the author's eighth short story for…
Patriotic and personal verse for the day by William Mackay MacKeracher (1871-1913), the very same man who wrote that old favourite 'My Canadian Girl.' Both come from Canada, My Land and Other Compositions in Verse (Toronto: William Briggs, 1908), the third of five volumes of MacKeracher poetry. CANADA, MY LAND There may be more enchanting climes Within a southern zone; There may be eastern Edens…
The Baronet's Bride; Or, A Woman's Vengeance May Agnes Fleming Chicago: Donahue, n.d. 250 pages Not to suggest that he didn't deserve it, but has there ever been a more tortured soul in all of Canadian literature than Sir Jasper Kingswood? The first words of this novel – "And there is danger of death – for mother and child?" – are his. The mother is wife Olivia, who is struggling greatly to give…
In Montreal, a city blessed with so very many works of public art, the Monument aux Patriotes stands as one of the most poignant. It was unveiled one hundred years ago today by nonagenarian Marion Cardinal-Marion. This and other St-Jean-Baptiste Day events were covered on the front page of the 24 June 1926 edition of the Montreal Daily Star , the city's afternoon Anglo newspaper. The reporting…
Mist of Morning Isabel Ecclestone Mackay Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1919 407 pages "We're piling up fireworks all around — just suppose that some one, with a screw loose, should take a fancy to see them go off?" Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's longest novel, Mist of Morning meanders, but I enjoyed the meandering. It begins with a Dickensian scene. Young David Greig is brave enough to deliver a…
Sunburst Phyllis Gotlieb New York: Fawcett, 1964 160 pages Sorrel Park is no place to live, but this wasn't always so. A smallish city not far from Chicago, it was once a place of industry and well-paying jobs. During the "Open-The Door-In-Eighty-Four" policy, immigrants from Western Europe flooded in until it all went horribly wrong. First came the 1994 nuclear reactor explosion and resulting…
Antoinette de Mirecourt or, Secret Marrying and Secret Sorrowing Rosanna Leprohon Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973 200 pages Antoinette De Mirecourt, or, Secret Marrying and Secret Sorrowing Rosanna Leprohon Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989 334 pages Six summers ago, I made slow progress through Armand Durand; ou, La promesse accomplie , the French translation of Rosanna Leprohon's 1868…
As a Watered Garden Marian Keith [Mary Esther Miller MacGregor] Toronto; McClelland & Stewart, 1946 297 pages My Marian Keith collection began with The Bells of St Stephens , purchased seventeen years ago in London, Ontario, not long after our move to nearby St Marys. I ask you, what self-respecting bibliophile could pass up a jacket like this? I'd barely heard of Marian Keith and had no idea how…
A follow-up to last week's review of I Was Going Anyway by Robert Switzer . Robert Switzer's I Was Going Anyway as published as a Cock Robin Mystery, a series Macmillan published from 1955 to 1970. Poul Anderson, Lawrence Block, John Creasey, Michael Moorcock, Josephine Tey, and Donald Westlake were amongst the other Cock Robin authors. But I Was Going Anyway is not a mystery, something remarked…
I Was Going Anyway Robert Switzer New York: Macmillan, 1961 121 pages Robert Switzer flew under my radar for decades, it was only last month that I first read his name. I shelled out a bit extra for a copy of I Was Going Anyway with a dust jacket and am glad I did. The rear flap features some very interesting information about the man: I expect there is some exaggeration in the description of the…
Wedded for a Week; or, The Unseen Bridegroom May Agnes Fleming London: Milner, [n.d.] 248 pages We begin on a dark and stormy November night at a ball hosted by Mrs Walraven, matriarch of the New York Walravens, at her Fifth Avenue mansion. Prodigal son Carl is in attendance, having recently returned from two decades spent in parts unknown. A greying thirty-nine-year-old, he still attracts the…
The Torrent [ Le torrent ] Anne Hébert [trans Gwendolyn Moore] Montreal: Harvest House, 1973 141 pages Anne Hébert completed Le torrent in 1945, but it didn't reach bookstores until five years later. No Quebec publisher would touch the work, which explains how it is that the first edition was printed privately. A slim collection of five short stories, it was considered too dark, too disturbing…
Last year, I participated in CrowdsourceHerBook: Women's book history and participatory science – an experiment . Overseen by Charlotte Epple, a PhD fellow at the University of Southern Denmark, it ran from March to December and involved sourcing images of "women-owned books printed before 1900 in private ownership." It was an enjoyable experience. My only regret was that I learned of the project…
Portrait in Fear [ Mystery of Cedar Valley ] Vera Henry New York: Caravelle, 1964 160 pages I expected little of Portrait in Fear, the lone novel from an author whose bibliography consists almost entirely of confessionals published in post-war love pulps. Ideal Love (December 1946) and Glamorous Love (July 1954) She had me from the opening: Even after all this time, the townspeople of Cedar Valley…
'Four To Go' Kay Grant [Hilda Kay Grant] The Star Weekly (24 - 31 March 1973) I once thought that Hilda Kay Grant's bibliography could be divided neatly into two unequal parts. The first spanned thirteen years, beginning in 1951 with The Salt-Box , a fictionalized memoir of her youth published under the name "Jan Hilliard." Five novels followed, all using the very same nom de plume , the last…
The Window with the Sleeping Nude Robert Leslie Bellem Toronto: Harlequin, 1950 A mystery novel, The Window with the Sleeping Nude begins with store detective Barney Cunard – "two hundred pounds of hangover" – arriving at work at Westervelt Department Store. A naked mannequin is lying prone in a display window. Some joke, except that it's not a dummy and is very dead. Martha Deane's body is found…
The Invisible Gate Constance Beresford-Howe New York: Dodd, Mead, 1949 241 pages I met Constance Beresford-Howe at the 1991 opening of a Toronto bookstore. She was sixty-nine at the time. I thought she was much older. This had less to do with appearance as bibliography. Her debut novel, The Unreasoning Heart , had been published a full forty-five years earlier. What I didn't know was that she'd…
It's been a remarkably cold winter, made more so by news Friday that Catherine O'Hara had died. Apparently, she was seventy-one. Who knew? She was as convincing playing a pre-teen as she was an octogenarian. Catherine O'Hara and other SCTV cast members had been on my mind of late due to an Olman's Fifty review of Kenneth Millar's The Three Roads . An early work – so early that it was written…
Let the revival begin! I first read Jan Hilliard three years ago. The book was Dove Cottage , her third novel. It may not be the best place to start, but Dove Cottage is very good, so good that I purchased and read all her others. Morgan's Castle was Jan Hilliard's most successful book sales-wise. Published in 1964 by Abelard-Schuman, it received enthusiastic reviews. Anthony Boucher championed…
The Woman Who Didn't Victoria Cross [Annie Sophie Cory] London: Lane, 1909 159 pages The narrator is a British soldier who is returning home on leave having served six years in India. He reclines in the aft of a large boat one dark Aden evening, smoking and listening with bemusement to his fellow countrymen squabble with local boatmen as to when payment should be made for services. "I should pay…