Gabrielle Roy, until my reading began, was one of those figures, like Hugh MacLennan that I feel like I was bred to dislike, or at least to be skeptical of in the event that I ever read her. I heard so much negativity about the novel that is to be considered her great masterpiece, The Tin Flute. I read it two summers ago, and I was actually quite impressed. It was engaging and moving, and often sad, but good. Its depiction of a French-Canadian family living in the slums of St. Henri was also a little bit dearer to my heart because not only did I spend my formative adult years living in Montreal, and for a while living in a very French section of the city, but I had a boy(yes a boy!) that I dated that lived in the terribly poor section of Montreal known as St. Henri. I've seen what it looks like on the other side of the tracks, and it's not good, and it's sad, still, even though the book was published over 60 years ago. She did a great job with that book. That said, I still had my doubts of Street of Riches which was Roy's second book to win the Governor General. I had(stupid me!) read a review on amazon that wasn't that favorable, and didn't put much merit into this slim volume of interconnected stories about a French-Canadian family living in St. Boniface, Manitoba, where Roy herself grew up. This was also a very pleasant surprise, but in a way moreso, since it reminded me much of L.M. Montgomery's work however many years earlier. Even though the stories revolve around the same family, they are told somewhat out of chronological order; but you still get the idea/sense of everyone and what is going on. L.M. Montgomery, another great female Canadian writer, had the great ability of telling stories about the every day folk, the salt of the earth, but in a funny, quirky, somewhat uplifting, yet poetic kind of way. Each story about Christine and her family is so tightly crafted, but brimming with such life. There is the story "The Two Negroes" in which Christine's family and her neighbors each take in a black porter from the trains, to board with them, and how they compete over which one of their "negroes" is better. It's so innocent, and reflective of a much different time, especially so far removed from the deep South as Manitoba is. When Christine's sister joins the convent, the story revolves around a piece of yellow ribbon that("A Bit of Yellow Ribbon")that Christine so desperately covets. She knows she will miss her sister, but in her youth, she knows that her sister leaving her worldly possessions behind means there's more loot for her.:) But in all these innocent stories, that are reminiscent of the past and a simple life well led, what is interesting is Roy's narrator Christine is also highly observant of a woman's place in society and what it meant, and how she even finds it troublesome. There were so many quotes that I loved that were just so insightful in the year 1957. The first one was from the story "The Gadabouts" which in itself was a great story, since it is when Christine's mother just decides to up and take her with her on a trip across the country to Montreal, without telling Christine's father(who was to be at one of his settlements anyway)and leaving the rest of the children with the neighbors. This shows a very interesting side of the mother, who in all other intensive purposes was a very traditional French Canadian housewife, but with one hell of a streak of independence. At once you're applauding this woman for her courage, especially in her time, but in the other breath, you wonder if she's a little unstable or if she'll get into trouble...which of course you don't want for her at all. To see this whole story unfold through a child's eyes is quite endearing and interesting, but it is really from an adult who is looking back on her memories as a child. Anywho, they go to visit some long lost cousins of Christine's mother, and the whole situation is just a little bit awkward, but lends a great quote.

"We were at once informed that Madame Nault was both niece and sister to archbishops, that she had been born Delilah Forget, and that young girls of good family did not ahve the opportunities of former times to marry well; advantageous matches were growing ever scarcer.

Maman also took on the airs of a lady of position: she remarked how true this all was, that we should like to prolong our visit with Madame Nault, but that we had many people and many things we must see during our trip to Montreal, that the time had come when we must return to our hotel. Then Maman added, as though it were quite incidental, that her husband held a post in the Ministry of Colonization. She spoke of one thing and another, and found ways to interlard frequent little phrases like "my husband - in the employ of the federal government"..."my husband - a civil servant of the state"...and I realized how much better received in society is a woman who boasts of her husband than one who is alone. This seemed to me unjust; I had never noticed that a man needed to talk of his wife in order to appear important" (60).

It is Christine's father, too, who also notices the state of women in the settlements that he works with further into the country. We find out that it is Christine's sister Agnes in whom the father does most of his confiding, for whatever reason. He tells Agnes of his settlement of Ruthenians that live in the settlement of Dunrea.

"The men sat down; not the women, whose role now was to remain standing behind hosts and guests, attentive to pass them the various dishes. Was Papa sorry for them, was he fond of them, these silent, shy women, who hid their lovely tresses beneath kerchiefs and murmered, as they served the men, 'If you please...?'

He had told Agnes that Ruthenian women's voices were the same as murmuring of water and of silence. It is certain, though, that he would have preferred to see them seated a the same time as the men at their own table. This was the only fault he found with his Little Ruthenians - that they were absolute masters in their own families. Several times he was tempted to speak to them about this, to invite the women also to sit down at table...but he was not entirely at home.

Papa often spent a night at Dunrea. There he slept like a child. The women's voices were never high or screeching. They seemed happy. "But what does that prove?" Papa wondered. "The slaves of other days were certainly happier than their masters. Contentment is not necessarily the servant of justice." So the lot of the women at Dunrea was the only thing that upset him. He listened to them humming their babies to sleep...and soon he himself slipped into slumber as into a whole and deep submission. When he awoke, it was to the good smell of strong coffee which the women were preparing for him downstairs." (77)

When Christine dresses herself up in costume jewelry because at the age of fifteen she believes to be what she needs to make herself beautiful, it is when her father is away, but her brother Robert is in town. She comes downstairs in all her finery. Her brother is quite amused by the whole situation, and gives her more money as to egg on her foolishness.

"'Here,' he told me; 'your collection must certainly lack some bit of jewelry. Take this; it'll allow you to decorate yourself even better...'

But Maman sighed sorrowfully. 'Why do you encourage so cruel a bent, Robert?...'

On my way back up to my room, I heard them talking about me. 'Every woman,' Maman was saying, 'has, deep down within her, a poor little pagan soul, and it seems to me that you men all too often bow down before that very pagan...'

'Of course,' said Robert, laughing.

'She who toys with you, she who is dreaming up a thousand hard and pitiless games - yes - that's the one you egg on. When you come right down to it, there is no equality between men and women. The lovely virtues - loyalty, frankness, straightforwardness, admirable simplicity - you insist on for yourselves, whereas you esteem women for their wiles, their flightiness. And that's bad, first of all for yourselves, who are the first to suffer from it, and for women whom - it would seem - you enjoy keeping in a state of artful childishness. Oh, when, indeed,' exclaimed Maman, 'will the same qualities be of good repute for all!...'" (128-9)

It is in "The Voice of the Pools, when Christine's calling to be a writer really begins to show itself, and one wonders if this was a story that is not at least slightly autobiographical. It is her mother who though she has shown her much of the power of the written word who also warns of her self-ostracization. Something that I think of when I am doing something so intensely solitary as this project, something which no one exactly understands but myself.

"'Writing,' she told me sadly, 'is hard. It must be the most exacting business in the world...If it is to be true, you understand! Is it not like cutting yourself in two, as it were - one half trying to live, the other watching, weighing?...'

And she went on: 'First the gift is needed; if you have not that, it's heartbreak; but if you have it, it's perhaps equally terrible...For we say the gift; but perhaps it would be better to say the command. And here is a very strange gift,' Maman continued, 'not wholly human. I think other people never forgive it. This gift is a little like a stroke of ill luck which withdraws others, which cuts us off from almost everyone...'

How could Maman speak with such exact knowledge? As she talked I felt the truth of what she said, and felt as though I had already suffered it.

Maman's eyes were distant, and she was so concerned to guard me well, to defend me, that they filled with sadness. 'To write,' she said to me, 'is this not, finally, to be far from others...to be all alone, poor child?'

After a brief rain, the frogs renewed their song of such fetching wearisomeness. I think one must yearn far in advance for the long road to be traveled, for the ultimate visage which will give us life. Curiosity to know ourselves - perhaps that is what best draws us forward..." (132)

I am at a point now in which I want to know myself better, and it is drawing me forward, drawing me to complete this project and to know what it will become, since sometimes it already feels larger than what I even know about right now...What I do know, though is Gabrielle Roy is no slouch, she's a great writer who earned her place in the hall of fame of Canadian writers. She is important and her writer's voice makes her important on so many levels, not only as a Canadian, but as a Manitoban, a French-Canadian, and most importantly as a woman. I'm glad that I have had to read her.:) PPs-46, GGs-42.

I was explaining to my sister today, about my project and its importance, at least to me, but also to the rest of the countries that these books have been published in. One of the books that I told her about was the one that I need to write about now, Brian Moore's The Great Victorian Collection. It was the winner of the Governor General in 1975, the year before Marian Engel's Bear won the GG, and the same year that Michael Shaara's big, marvelous book on the battle of Gettysburg The Killer Angels won the Pulitzer Prize in the United States. It is noteworthy to talk about this book in the context of those novels, but also in the context of the prizes as a whole, because this book is so vastly different, like Bear, from any of the other books I've read thus far. This book is almost borderline science fiction/fantasy, a style of novel that I have not yet seen win the prize, and I have now read over 90 of the combined books. This is about a man who has a dream, and the dream comes true, and then the dream becomes a nightmare. We've all had dreams that we wished would never end, that we wished would come true. I remember being a little kid, no more that four years old, and dreaming that I found chest upon chest of diamonds, diamonds the size of my fist. Imagine my dismay, when I woke up and discovered that my room was NOT filled with chests of diamonds. Well, I suppose I can't tell you what it would be like for me if the diamonds really were there when I woke up. I think it could be wonderful, but also very very frightening, for what if my nightmares came true as well? Well, Dr. Anthony Maloney experiences all of this himself. The Great Victorian Collection is what Dr. Maloney dreams up. On his way home from a conference, Dr. Maloney decides to stay in the small town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California for the weekend before returning to Montreal on that Monday night. The first night he stays in the hotel he has a magnificent dream, in which he pulls away the curtain of his hotel room window, and in the vacant lot next to the hotel in which he is staying is an immense collection of Victoriana. For Dr. Maloney, this is a dream come true, because that is the field in which he is an expert. The catch is, when he wakes up in the morning, he wakes up from the dream. Well, not really. In the morning, he wakes up, pulls back the curtain of his hotel room and...the collection is there. Still there. Thus begins the next year of his life. Dr. Maloney goes out to walk amongst the collection and it is amazing, it is pristine, it is perfect. There are pieces that he has only ever read about, there are pieces that are only in one other place in the world, some house or museum in England. There is an entire room with all kinds of hidden compartments that store all kinds of pieces of S & M equipment and one of the largest collections of Victorian Erotica the world has seen. There is a marvelous glass fountain, there are complete period costumes. For someone such as Dr. Maloney, it is indeed a dream come true. For the manager of the hotel it is a great big nuisance, he doesn't understand where it came from, but it has to go. Dr. Maloney tries to explain that he didn't bring it from anywhere or move it from anywhere, he dreamt it up. Then, the reporters begin to arrive. And the questions begin, and for a while no one believes him, and then they actually do. At first Dr. Maloney loves the attention, loves leading tours of reporters and even eventually visitors through the collection, showing off secret compartments, etc., but then he begins to feel trapped by the collection. This is especially evident one day when he just wants to get away and go to the beach with a reporter and his girlfriend. As he drives away from the collection the weather starts to deteriorate and then it begins to rain...Dr. Maloney panics and returns to the collection as soon as possible, to check on it. There is indeed some damage to some of the pieces due to the weather, so then he has to get tarps and such to make sure that the collection is protected from the elements. This is the first indication that the dream may not be a dream after all. Maloney realizes that he can't leave the collection and then that starts to freak him out. He has two obsessions then, one he desires, and one he does not. One is the girlfriend of the reporter Vaterman who befriends him. The woman's name is Mary Ann. The other is the dream that continues outside of his hotel room window, and also in his sleep. He starts to dream that he is seeing the entire collection through a surveillance television. It is a dream from which he cannot escape, unless he doesn't sleep or drinks himself into such a stupor that his mind is blank. He tries to self medicate with pills, but even that doesn't work. The dream returns. It is this dream that will eventually drive him to his death and drive him to the destruction of his relationship with Mary Ann. This book is also interesting because throughout it and at the end is reference to Dr. Spector's work on this whole situation along with Vanderbilt University. For someone, while this was all occuring, decided of course that it was worthwile studying this phenomenon. For, as the man deteriorates, so does the collection. What this makes one think about is how connected are we to our dreams and how much do our dreams define us? Or also, to what extent do we follow our dreams or let them control us? When you look at it through that thematic lens, we see exactly how the novel fits into the prize history, for so much of literature is about our dreams and our paths to get there or how we get derailed, and/or how the "derailment" as it were leads us to discover more about ourselves and our real dreams. This book looks at a very specific dream, a somewhat unrealistic dream, but isn't that the art of fiction? Pablo Picasso once said, "art is not truth, art is merely a lie that make us realize the truth." Perhaps that is what this slim odd novel is meant to do, and in its somewhat absurdity, it holds its place quite well. PPs-46, GGs-41.