Arriving in bookstores as I write, the eighteenth Ricochet Books title. Whispering City is based on the Quebec City film noir of the same name. First published in 1947, it is one of the most sought after post-war Canadian paperbacks. A lone copy of that only other edition is listed online at $305.90.
The new Ricochet edition will set you back $15.95.
I provide a new intro.
Copies can be purchased through the usual online booksellers and at the Véhicule Press website.
Earlier this month, I tried to sell a friend on Basil King, as is my habit. I mentioned that in 1909 his novel The Inner Shrine outsold every other book in the United States, adding that he very nearly repeated that accomplishment the following year, and again the year after that. In this regard, King bested fellow Prince Edward Islander L.M. Montgomery, who never once made the annual top ten.
The annual top ten?
I refer here to lists compiled by The Bookman and Publisher's Weekly. The former cobbled together the first in 1895, the year Scotsman Ian Maclaren's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush was all the rage. It didn't take long for a Canadian to appear. In 1896, Gilbert Parker's The Seats of the Mighty placed third, blocked from the top spot by Francis Hopkinson Smith's Tom Grogan and A Lady of Quality by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which I'm sure you've all read.
Gilbert Parker – later, Sir Gilbert Parker – was a publisher's dream. Scribner's 1912 twenty-four volume Works of Gilbert Parker is a beautiful thing. The more expensive editions come with a tipped in handwritten autographed letter.
Parker is one of eight Canadians to hit the American year-end top ten. What follows is a year-by-year list of those authors and their titles, beginning with Parker's The Seats of the Mighty. Some may question the inclusion of Saul Bellow and Arthur Hailey. My position on both men is simple. Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec. He was a nine-year-old when his family left Canada for the United States. Arthur Hailey immigrated to this country after the Second World War and became a Canadian citizen.
Long-time Toronto resident John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire, which placed second in 1981, is not included because it wasn't until 2019 that he became a Canadian citizen.
W.H. Blake's translation of Louis Hémon's Maria Chapdelain, which in 1922 was the eighth bestselling book in the United States is excluded. Though the novel has been described as a "a classic of French-Canadian literature," Hémon was French, not French-Canadian. His visit to this country lasted months, not years. My late friend Michael Gnarowski argued that Hémon would've become a citizen had he not been struck and killed by a train whilst walking the tracks outside Chapleau, Ontario. On this we disagreed.
1901
#4 – The Right of Way by Gilbert Parker
1902
#6 – The Right of Way by Gilbert Parker
#10 – The Weavers by Gilbert ParkerThe Weavers again, yet unlike The Right of Way, this one never made Broadway, nor was it adapted by Hollywood.
1909
#1 – The Inner Shrine by Anonymous [Basil King]
Reverend King's sixth novel, The Inner Shrine was the year's literary sensation. I think that much of the interest had to do with questions over authorship. Did it come from the pen of Edith Wharton? Henry James? How about the daughter of Willian Dean Howells?
1910
"Are you sure you and Young Ab didn't didn't have some kind of an argument and then that that [sic] temper of yours didn't get the better of you?"Detective Sergeant Bower of the OPP has a similar theory. A grim, unfriendly man he isn't so much intent on investigating as obtaining an a confession.
The last thing Young Ab said before he went to sleep was that the alarm was set for four o'clock and that we'd better get some sleep.Sadly, The Clue of the Dead Duck remains relevant. It hasn't aged.
But sometimes when I'm just about to go to sleep things seem very clear to me. If I've done something wrong during the day, it's in those few minutes before I go to sleep that I worry about it. Now I started thinking, suppose there's an accident? Suppose somebody gets shot? The faces of all the people I knew around Irishman's Lake, all the people who accepted me right now because I was under Black Ab's protection, came up in my mind. But as I lay therein the dark, these faces seemed to be looking at me accusingly. Old ladies had their heads bent together and were looking out of the corners of their eyes at me, and I was scared.
God of the harvest, once againOur joyful tones we raise,For all Thy goodness, day by day,We give Thee thankful praise.With blessings rich, from fertile field,And gifts from fruitful tree,We wish, this day, our thanks to yieldWith earnest hearts, to Thee.We ploughed the ground, we sow'd the seed,But Thou didst send the rainIn grateful show'rs, in time of need.And now we've reap'd the grain.The sun with grateful heat did shine;The dew did nightly fall;And now, for loaded tree and vine —We give Thee thanks for all.The bee, in well-fill'd honey cells.Her sweets for us hath stow'd,The crystal water in the wells,For us from springs hath flowed.The lowing herd, the prancing steedReceived we from Thy hand.And we, this day, return oar meedOf praise, throughout the land.Then let us sing with earnest hearts,Tho' joyful be each lay,And thankful ev'ry song that startsOn this Thanksgiving Day.
