Claire Holden Rothman

I read this for a book club. While I was reading, I would get absorbed in the story, but after putting it down, I was always reluctant to pick it back up again. The main character is Agnes, who was born in Montreal in 1869, and wants to be a surgeon. She is brilliant, but socially awkward, and experiences a lot of rejection and hypocrisy. Agnes' first person narration means that the motivations of other characters are filtered through her own social naïveté, and the reader is credited with the intelligence to infer what is really happening. The Prelude and first chapter take place in January, of 1874 and 1882 respectively, which sets a bleak tone that carries through the rest of the book. It ends in January 1919, shortly after the end of World War I. I found the ending very satisfying. The book is bleaker than I really like, but I appreciated the quality of the writing.… (mehr)

I didn't pay much attention to the October Crisis when it was going on. After all, I was living in a small community in rural Manitoba and Montreal seemed impossibly far away. When the War Measures Act was introduced it didn't make any difference to my daily life so I didn't think how draconian it was. Besides I was a fan of Pierre Trudeau and he could do no wrong in my eyes. Looking back I'm still not sure it was the wrong thing to do even though it was heavy-handed. This book is not about that October Crisis but rather about a smaller domestic crisis that affected one family in October of 2001 and yet, it has ties to the bigger October Crisis.

Luc Levesque is a well-known francophone writer whose books are set in the working class neighbourhood of Saint-Henri in Montreal. Since that is the same neighbourhood in which Gabrielle Roy set Bonheur d'Occasion (The Tin Flute) Luc has been compared favourably to Roy. (Incidentally, as a Manitoban it irritates me to no end that Quebeckers claim Roy as their own because of that book when, in reality, she lived much of her life in Manitoba and set many of her books here.) His wife, Hannah, is anglophone and the daughter of the man who was special prosecutor during the October Crisis. She has distanced herself from her English family and works as a translator of French books. They have one son, Hugo, who attends the same private school that his father attended. This family's crisis is sparked by the discovery of a Luger in Hugo's school backpack. Hugo is a typical angry young man who withdraws into video games when he is not at school. His parents, especially his father, are frustrated with trying to communicate with him and to understand why he took a gun to school.

I found this book interesting for its picture of modern realities for the people of Quebec but I thought the writing was uneven. I especially found that Hannah's motivations were hard to understand. Hannah's father had just suffered a stroke in Toronto where he and Hannah's mother lived, having moved shortly after the PQ came to power. Hannah's mother begged Hannah to come to Toronto to help her get their house ready for him to come home from the hospital. Although Luc had left Hannah shortly after the incident with the gun, she still seemed unable to leave Montreal to help her parents. I understand that she was torn between Luc and her parents during the marriage but people usually get past that when push comes to shove. Rothman describes Hannah during this time as being depressed but, to me, that does not fully explain her withdrawal.

All in all, I did like this book but I never felt any deep connection to the characters.… (mehr)

Agnes and her sister are raised by their grandmother. She is fortunate that Miss Skerry, her governess, who shares her passion for learning science and conducting experiments, becomes her advocate and friend. Her determination to study medicine gains her respect. By focusing on the heart she is searching for the truth about her father. She comes to idealize Dr. William Howlett learning he was close to her father. It takes many difficult years for this bright doctor to recognize the truth...finally, but thankfully it is not too late.

A smart, strong read which I definitely enjoyed.… (mehr)