Orphan Street [Une Chaîne dans le parc]
André Langevin [trans., Alan Brown]
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976
287 pages
This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through
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I remember when the movie Devil in the Blue Dress was released and flopped. Denzel Washington said maybe releasing a movie with a black hero the same weekend as the OJ riots in the LA was bad timing. Likewise maybe 1976 was bad timing to get English Canada to read even more about Montreal.
ReplyDeleteBesides everyone was probably too caught up in Alex Haley's Roots...
I think you're on to something, John.This may have not been the time for an ambitious bildungsroman set in Second World War Montreal. Political thrillers on the other hand… I'm thinking of Richard Rohmer's Separation, Leo Heaps The Quebec Plot and, of course, Don Pendleton's Canadian Crisis (The executioner #24), in which the mafia mafia decide to make Quebec the crime capital of the world.
DeleteMe? I was caught up in James at 15.