Hugh MacLennanRecensioni

Excellent novel based on a real event - the Halifax harbour explosion of 1917.

A good first novel from my favorite Canadian author. Really brings you back to the era and the first hand account of the explosion I think is uncanny seems like the author witnessed the events.

A classic novel on the immiscible French and English cultures of Canada.

3.25 stars

It’s 1917 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Penny (a woman working at the shipyard – very unusual for the time)’s love (and cousin) has been at war and he’s missing. They all think he’s dead. So, when Angus (much older than Penny) asks her to marry him, she accepts. Only days later, the Halifax Harbour goes up in an explosion.

The book only follows just over one week. It took longer than I liked to get to the explosion. Leading up to it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the explosion itself and the aftermath, but not long after, it concluded mostly with their regular lives again. If there had been more focus on the disaster, I would have enjoyed it more, I’m sure. There was an afterword by another “classic” Canadian author, Alistair Macleod – one of those that analyzes the book; one of the ones that should never be an introduction but often is (because it gives away the story)! Luckily, it was an afterword.

His books start off well and then get lost.

This collection didn’t grab me the same way Cross Country did — the essays on the English culture felt somewhat pointless to this 21st-century reader. I would have liked more of the ones he wrote about Canada: the one about Diefenbaker was especially interesting, and I liked his descriptions of the weather in the Eastern Townships.

All of the essays in this collection were well written, but sometimes I couldn’t tell MacLennan’s actual position on an issue; was he talking about these things because he liked them or because he didn’t? Maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention. This is probably one of those books that works better as a bedside book than something read on the bus in 20-minute spurts.

Reading this almost sixty years after my father did (I can tell by the spine) brought back memories of him. Although a bit younger than MacLennan, they were of the same generation. MacLennan's description of Canada, Montreal and the Eastern Townships of Quebec at mid-century really resonated. It's hard to pin him down politically, though he doesn't seem quite a neutral observer, having strong ideas about education and capitalist consumption. Both he and my father were forged during the interwar, depression and World War II years. I thoroughly enjoyed these essays and I think, while inadvertently, reading them now has been a nice Father's Day gift to my dear departed dad.

Like Two Solitudes, this book deals with the conflict between English and French Canada as French Canada seeks to throw off the twin yokes of the Catholic Church and the wealthy Anglo establishment. We have a family with a French mother, an English father, and fully bilingual children, each of whom have their own struggles. The main focus of the jacket blurb is the son, Daniel, who is part of a movement that uses riots and other physical tactics to spread its message.

I couldn’t finish this book. The characters, particularly Daniel, are more like mouthpieces for the various movements that are in conflict. I ended up skipping half a chapter of Daniel blathering on to the mother of his sort-of girlfriend because it felt so lecture-y (and mansplainy). And normally I’d slog through the mouthpiece stuff. What did this book in for me was the fact that the female characters get short shrift in this story: Daniel’s mother, Constance, is dead before the story begins, and his sister ends up sleeping with her dad’s old friend (EW) and then says she’s in love with him and the thing she wants most in this world is to give him a son! EW EW EW EW so unprogressive. Daniel’s girlfriend’s mother ends up sleeping with him after spending an evening listening to him complain about les maudits Anglais. And then there’s the recurring narrative tic of male protagonists noticing people’s butts as if they were Tina Belcher or something.

This book was better than Voices in Time but worse than Two Solitudes. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone starting out with MacLennan. Try his novels that are more autobiographical: The Watch That Ends the Night, or Barometer Rising.½

I am a sucker for good prose applied to interpersonal relationships through a historical period. Hugh MacLennan makes such good use of the English language, understands people, and has a good grasp on the (granted, in hindsight) temper of the times during the Spanish Civil War. He seems to invite us to judge every character while pleading the case for each. It is the eviscerating truth of the human condition that allows his work to draw us in.½

Warning: This review contains spoilers

****

Hugh MacLennan’s best-known (by reputation, if not by content) novel covers the first three decades of the twentieth century, from the First World War to the Second World War, and follows the lives of one French-Canadian and one English-Canadian family. The stories of the two families combine with Paul Tallard, son of a French father and an English mother, who must learn how to find a place for himself in a society that seems to be split in two.

Overall, this was not a terrible book. This sounds like faint praise for a book from one of my favourite authors (mainly on the strength of two of his other books, The Watch that Ends the Night and Barometer Rising), but I had a hard time rating this one. The story itself sweeps the reader right along, and it covers a lot of interesting historical ground.

However, to a 21st-century female reader, more than a few men don’t come off very well. Athanase Tallard causes his family huge upheavals without consulting them, Huntly McQueen is a symbol of Anglo dominance in French Canada, Marius Tallard is a whiny self-absorbed prick, and even Paul has a moment where he seems to be questioning whether marital rape is physically possible. (I’m still in shock about that. WHY did he have to ask that? He wasn’t doing it, he was wondering it about somebody else, but URGH.)

But it’s not just the men who are capable of being jerks. Janet Methuen absolutely infuriated me with her martyrdom and guilt-tripping of her daughter, Heather, who ends up marrying Paul. Janet doesn’t want Heather marrying him because he’s French, and also he doesn’t have a job. Never mind that it’s the Depression and work is hard to come by.

Of course, I could be disproportionately angry with Janet because her guilt-tripping reminded me SO MUCH of my own parents giving me a hard time when my boyfriend had a hard time finding a job after getting his master’s degree. He graduated at exactly the wrong time; the government had a hiring freeze, and the private companies that would normally have hired him were busy going bankrupt or getting creditor protection. So I could sympathize with Heather when Janet was giving her trouble.

Fortunately, John Yardley the sea captain was a bright spot in this book, as were the descriptions of Montreal, Lake Memphramagog, and Halifax. And I certainly don’t regret reading a Canadian classic. But I’d probably suggest that you read Barometer Rising or The Watch that Ends the Night first, if you haven’t tried MacLennan yet.½

Broughton, Cape Breton, is your typical mining town, where the men all work down in the mine from an early age and are doomed to an early grave from industrial illnesses. One of the men, Archie MacNeil, has left his wife and young son behind to try his luck as a prize fighter in the United States. The town doctor feels a kinship with the son, Alan, and wants to do whatever he can to save Alan from a rough-and-tumble life in the mines.

Hugh MacLennan lived in such a town in Nova Scotia, so this novel is a homecoming for him. The phonetically rendered Gaelic-tinged accents can seem a bit much sometimes -- even the Frenchman doesn't have as strong an accent, or perhaps I was so surprised by the Scottish Gaelic accents that a French accent in print went unnoticed. The characters and the setting were vividly rendered, as you would expect from a novel written by a local, and while the back cover blurb discusses an event that doesn't happen until close to the end of the book, that event's impact is in no way lessened by the reader knowing that it will happen.

The more recent New Canadian Library edition has an afterword by Alec Lucas that dissects the book from a religious standpoint, which may be of greater interest to more serious students of literary criticism. I found that part dull. The main attraction is the book. I would recommend Each Man's Son if you like to read books set in Nova Scotia, have read Twenty-Six, by Leo McKay Jr., or if you've read and enjoyed Barometer Rising, MacLennan's original "Maritimes novel".

This novel is so many things. It's a tremendous love story, It's a story about a Canadian city (Montreal) as it was in the 1930's and 1940's. It's a story of loss, betrayal and abandonment. It's a story about the internal strength and resliency of the human spirit. It is also a story of Canada written by an author who truly loved this country of ours. The story is tragic and hopeful at the same time. It left me with a feeling of loss at the end when the narrative of the three main characters comes to its ineveitable end. Jerome, Catherine and George will reamin with me for a time, as so often happens with wonderful books written by a master as Hugh MacLennan was. Not quite the book that Two Solitudes is, but I'm glad that I took the time to read it. Hugh's love and understanding of Canada and the people who live here is quite remarkable, and reading one of his books makes prouder than ever to be a Canadian.

This is a personality study of 3 people and the times that defined them; Montreal, 1930s depression and two World Wars. It is a haunting book that will stay with me for a long time. The author's writing style is intense and yet compassionate. MacLennan is a wonderful story teller.

This is a personality study of 3 people and the times that defined them; Montreal, 1930s depression and two World Wars. It is a haunting book that will stay with me for a long time. The author's writing style is intense and yet compassionate. MacLennan is a wonderful story teller.

This is a personality study of 3 people and the times that defined them; Montreal, 1930s depression and two World Wars. It is a haunting book that will stay with me for a long time. The author's writing style is intense and yet compassionate. MacLennan is a wonderful story teller.

One of the best novels I've read in a long time. I've had this book on my shelf since roughly 1981, and figured I'd read it ... until I finally did in 2015! I think I bought it for a university class, so I made the assumption that i'd scanned it, did the basics, and had been unimpressed. Wrong--I am very impressed with a very involving set of characters and a complex plot that involves world history but also a futuristic view of the world. I even think I found a line that Bruce Cockburn might have paraphrased in a song (involving a finger pointing at eternity). This is a beautifully written book that shows the darkest and the brightest sides of humanity.

This book written by the marvellous Hugh MacLennan and was originally released in 1945. It’s a novel that has been on my “to read” list for a long time and it is a “must-read” classic for all Canadians. The novel revolves around the city of Montreal and the province of Quebec from just before the beginning of World War I and ends just as World War II begins in 1939. There are so many layers and so many intricacies in this book and it is defined by two solitudes as the title suggests. The two solitudes are varied. There are the solitudes of the English-speaking Canadians and the French-speaking Canadians, and the book depicts so clearly why there has been so much discord between the two nationalities in Canada. It depicts the solitudes of the Canadian way and Canada and our nearest neighbours the United States of America, and how and why there are such differences between the two countries. The most glaring thing is that Canadians really never considered themselves a separate country until after the second World War. We came into our own after that war, mostly because of the bravery and valour of the soldiers who fought and died in that war. Canada took it’s rightful place on the world stage after that war. There are the two solitudes of the fictional characters in the book. Young French-Canadian Paul Tallard, the son of a fading French Canadian aristocrat, is the soldering iron that connects the old French Canadian families to the English-speaking proletariat characters who controlled the money and affairs of Canada and its destiny. As Paul struggles with his English and French Canadian identities, he goes through many epiphanies that enable him to understand the solitudes and why they are there. When the book opens, the world and Canada are on the brink of war (WWI), but the world is also on the brink of enormous change and Canada is on the precipice of taking the leap forward or not - forever remaining a little country outpost in the British empire. As we all know we took the leap and became the Canada we are today. The main characters in the book are wonderfully drawn, but what really drew me in to the book is MacLennan’s love for Canada and for our vast and beautiful country. It was humbling to realize just how important and wonderful my country is. It’s one of those things that I’ve always known, but never really took the time to really examine. It’s the best place on earth and Mr. MacLennan makes that abundantly clear throughout this wonderful book. “O Canada, we stand on guard for thee”.

In this book, published in 1961, Hugh MacLennan explores the terrain and history of seven major rivers of Canada. On the Mackenzie, he encounters tough old prospectors and learns how to cope with "northern time". On the St. Lawrence, he reflects on the good fortune of the settlers in this area and the river's importance to travel and trade. On the Ottawa, he explores the history of the rough-and-tumble lumber town that eventually became Canada's capital. On the Red, he ponders the unusual geology of the area (the river is actually the remnants of an ancient lake, so when the Red floods, it's reverting to the ancient lakebed) and discovers deltas teeming with wildlife. On the Saskatchewan, he traces the river's path along the lone prairie from its source in the Columbia Icefield and reflects on the harshness of the prairie homesteader life. On the Fraser, he tells the tale of Simon Fraser, who explored the namesake river, and the utter scariness that would be travelling down through the Black Canyon in just a flimsy canoe. And on the St. John, he discovers a slice of Old New England and discusses the river's abundant salmon and interesting hydrological features (the Reversible Falls).

The book originally began as a series of essays for Maclean's magazine, so it's very easy to pick up and put down. Each river is illustrated with a map of the terrain, including major towns and cities and other tributaries and bodies of water. Some essays are longer than others (the Ottawa and the St. John ones are fairly short), but all of them contain some interesting information. MacLennan also makes use of his own travels and experiences, comparing some stretches of river to the Thames or the bigger cities in Canada to other cities he's visited.

Of course, one must also bear in mind that this book was published over 50 years ago -- MacLennan makes a few predictions that haven't quite panned out, and presumably a lot of the places he visited have become much more urbanized. Still, a lot of the geography and early history is pretty timeless, as is the observation about no true Montrealer ever taking Toronto seriously ;-) Recommended if you're into books about the early history and geography of Canada -- for example, the stories of people like Susanna Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill and George Mercer Dawson, or novels like The Outlander (Gil Adamson) or Guy Vanderhaeghe's Western "trilogy".

This was my second attempt at getting through the book. I hardly got past the 10th page on my first attempt but this time, the first half of the book really captivated me. I wasn't as interested in the second half of the book - the pace moved too quickly compared to the first half and the story was somewhat lost in the Halifax explosion. Overall, a good story but wouldn't ever be a re-read for me.

what a dense, wonderful important novel. this was a re-read for me but i had lost so many details over the years it was like a new experience, this time through. following the strands of story arcs concerning 'two solitudes', through this novel, was amazing. maclennan wrote about so many important issues and brought heart and humanity to the telling. certainly a canadian classic and a book that should continue to resonate for generations to come.

Cross-Country was published after Hugh MacLennan's first three novels had won him great acclaim (Two Solitudes and The Precipice winning him his first and second Governor General's Awards). It's a collection of essays that touch on themes he discusses in his novels: about half the collection discusses the idea of the Canadian identity and his country's place in the world, especially in relation to the United States.

Even without having read (yet) MacLennan's GG-Award-winning novels, I found a lot to like about this collection. His writing is very smooth and elegant, and not without a touch of wit. (From his essay on the 1948 Republican convention: "A speech by Governor Duff followed and it might have been interesting if the speaker himself had been interested in what he was saying.") He readily admits when his observations are drawn merely from personal experience, especially in the title essay, which discusses his impressions of the United States from a road trip he and his wife, Dorothy, took to California one winter. And while he does prefer Canada, he is prepared to point out its weak points and where other countries do better; for example, he discusses the "brain drain", especially in the teaching profession at that time, with talented young Canadians fleeing to the States because they are not being given reasons to stay (other than the powers that be saying it's their "duty" -- as MacLennan says, "What do they think Canada is, a mission-field?").

The great thing about this collection, or potentially a point of despair, is that so much of what MacLennan says still resonates today. In his essay "On Discovering Who We Are", he compares Canada and the US in terms of entertainment, noting that many Canadians are tuned in to the World Series and that plenty of US magazines are available in Canadian convenience stores. He asks, how many Americans would be glued to the Canadian universities' football championship? How many US convenience stores would stock magazines such as Maclean's and Chatelaine? The debate continues today on Canadian content quotas and regulations, as well as the extent of American influence on Canadian culture. He also talks about the difficulties of selling Canada as a nation containing things other than Mounties, trappers and husky dogs.

I also liked his essays about his childhood, notably Christmases 1916 and 1917, both of which featured explosions. The 1917 event was the famous Halifax Explosion, also chronicled to great effect in Barometer Rising, while the 1916 event was his family's "own private explosion", caused by gas that had leaked from the city mains into the basement, and his father apparently went down with a lighted match to investigate. (His father subsequently denied this, because the news coverage that said as much made him look kind of stupid; embarrassing for a distinguished doctor.)

If you have read and enjoyed any of MacLennan's work, you will probably like these essays. One thing I should point out is that the first essay in particular is very much a "white guy in the late 1940s" sort of perspective; he compares Canada to a "good wife" and when discussing the founding of Canada he focuses more on the English, French and Scots (the First Nations don't get much of a look-in). But it's not written that way to be mean-spirited; it's just his worldview at that time and did not detract much from my enjoyment of the work. Indeed, I found occasion to quote one of his essays in a conversation with my grandparents, and they were suitably impressed. MacLennan is well worth reading and savouring if you're interested in the Canadian perspective from the mid-20th century.

This book chronicles the life of George Stewart; his wife, Catherine; and her first husband, Jerome Martell. George grew up with Catherine and always loved her, but never had the chance to marry her before Jerome did. Catherine's heart was damaged during a bout of rheumatic fever and so her time on Earth is more limited, but she does not let that limit her life. Jerome, a brilliant surgeon with an intense, energetic personality, goes to Spain during the Spanish Civil War and is presumed captured, tortured and dead, so after a while Catherine marries George. Except one day, Jerome comes back... and that's where our story opens. What effect will Jerome's return have on George and especially Catherine?

MacLennan writes beautifully in this book, and George's narration really touches your heart. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine how he would have been able to reconstruct some of the conversations, especially ones where he was not present, but it's easy enough to suspend disbelief. George's grief over Catherine's illness is all too real; MacLennan wrote this while his first wife was dying, and George's pain was likely to a great extent his own. But it's not all sad. Catherine herself refuses to let her condition bring her down, filling her days with creating joyful paintings, getting together with friends, and just enjoying life. There are amusing asides, too, especially about George's fellow teachers at Waterloo School (apparently based in part on MacLennan's experiences teaching at Lower Canada College). And the city of Montreal is very wonderfully described -- after reading this I have a hankering to go back.

I feel terrible about not liking Voices in Time. Seriously. I do like Hugh MacLennan -- he wrote one of my favourite books of all time (Barometer Rising). But I did not get along with this one at all, and that distresses me greatly.

When I started out, I read the back cover, which seemed promising. The story was to feature a "good German" in WW2 Germany and a Canadian celebrity who comes to prominence during the FLQ crisis of 1970, and of course the connections between their stories would be explored. "Two societies perched on the brink of destruction. Two men linked in time by fate." I love this stuff, especially the WW2 these days, and the FLQ crisis is one of those events I am always struck by when it comes up in fiction.

Then I started reading. Apparently the whole "two men linked in time by fate" thing, instead of being presented in the conventional manner of alternating chunks of narration, had a frame story of an elderly man named John Wellfleet, who is related to both of these men, going through their papers. Now this would not normally be a problem, except in this case John Wellfleet lived in some bizarre dystopia that was not adequately fleshed out at the beginning. I had way too many questions about it. Apparently Montreal was destroyed, and these papers were found in the ruins of a downtown building? What is this Destruction that allegedly took place? How about the Great Fear? A Bureaucracy somehow managed to rise from the ruins and rebuild society (three of them, actually)? How are the younger members of this rebuilding society able to pull together and start trying to harness hydroelectric energy, but they need the concept of television explained to them? They can use a telephone but have never heard of encyclopedias?

Theoretically, all of these questions would be answered in due course, and of course this was written in 1980 and may not have predicted the advent of personal computers, but the technological aspects really bugged me and I was not getting answers fast enough.

In addition, the writing style was difficult for me to get on with. Because the papers that Wellfleet is going through are not really well organized (as he says), the narrative is a mixture of summarizing by Wellfleet and direct quoting from the papers. The mishmash of voices was a bit too chaotic for me and may have worked better if the summarizing and direct quoting had been separated with white space and/or section breaks. The writing itself also tended to overwriting in places, with some of the dialogue sounding unnatural and the descriptions irritating me as description sometimes does. Also I personally do not need graphic descriptions of rape, especially when the victim is retelling the incident in first person.

After I decided to abandon this book I looked it up elsewhere online and found a page that summarized it as "dense and experimental." Had I known from the outset that it was experimental, would I have stuck with it longer? Perhaps, perhaps not. But I must confess I am extremely reluctant to try again.

From the very beginning of Barometer Rising, you can tell this is a singular book. The foreword sets the stage when it says that this book "is one of the first ever written to use Halifax, Nova Scotia, as its sole background." Then it blew my mind by saying that there was "as yet no tradition of Canadian literature" at the time Barometer Rising was originally published (1941). CanLit is not even 70 years old at the time this review is being written, and look at all the things we've accomplished! It's amazing.

Amazing also describes this book well. The story takes place from a few days before to a day or so after the Halifax Explosion, which occurred on December 6, 1917. It was a horrific event: a munitions ship collided with a relief vessel and caught fire, but only a few people knew what was really inside, so lots of people were out on the street watching the ship burn when it exploded. It is still one of the largest non-atomic explosions in history, or something like that.

But we are not following the crew of this ill-fated vessel. Instead we focus on Neil MacRae, a disgraced soldier who has returned to Halifax, where his lover (and also his cousin) Penelope Wain still lives. She believes he died in Europe, so she has managed to carry on, holding down a very respectable job designing ships. (Respectable from our perspective, of course; most of the male characters think she really shouldn't be doing "men's work".) What will happen if their paths crossed? How much has Penny changed? Has Neil changed? And of course what impact will the Explosion have when it occurs?

This is quite honestly a brilliant book. As a poet, MacLennan is blessed with a gift for description. He picks the right words and uses all of the senses, making the scene come to life. For example, the foghorns whose sounds permeated the walls of the Wain household. You can almost feel the bellow rattling around in your own bones when you read those lines. His protagonists are animated, with active inner thoughts (particularly those of Angus Murray, a medical officer from Neil's battalion). Of course greater dimension is given to Penny, Neil and Angus, but Geoffrey Wain, Penny's father and Neil's uncle, also has more to him than one might think.

MacLennan's description of the Explosion rates its own paragraph. It is utterly breathtaking, speaking to both the quality of his research and his ability to conjure up the perfect image. Even though what happens in the harbour is a matter of historical record and cannot be changed (this is not an alternate history novel), the dread one feels at the Imo approaching the deadly Mont Blanc is palpable, and the moment the ship goes up is sickening.

This is one of those rare books where I feel even a tiny bit comfortable discussing themes and symbols. The barometer mentioned in the title gave me pause, but I can guess that the fact that it's rising means that the pressure is increasing throughout the story -- the confrontation between the various parties involved in the Neil MacRae affair has to come to a head after the tension of the days leading up to the Explosion, which blows everyone's world apart and changes things radically. There is also a theme of the older generations being supplanted by the new, as illustrated by the character of Alec MacKenzie and the anecdote about Angus Murray returning to his father's farm and finding that much of the land his father had painstakingly cleared the trees from was reverting to new forest.

To conclude this review, I shall leave you with a short passage from the last little bit of the book.

No matter what happened to him in the future he would always be able to tell himself that he had survived worse things in the past. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Only one who had experienced ultimate things could comprehend the greatness of that line.

The line in question is from The Aeneid, and one possible translation is "Perhaps it will be pleasing to remember even this one day." Translator Robert Fagles did not propose this translation (I got it off Wikiquote), but he has been quoted as saying that "[the line] is about loss, about overcoming the worst", a statement that can also be fairly applied to this book. Very moving, beautifully written, Barometer Rising is a must-read for Canadian literature fans and anyone interested in historical fiction.

This is actually my second time reading Barometer Rising. I first read it almost 20 years ago. I enjoyed it then and even more so now.I was surprised that I could still find something in it; that it still had something to teach me. This time, I was able to appreciate the philosophical musings of the characters and Maclennan.

I have kept this quote nearby since my first reading of the novel:
Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Which is: Perhaps it will be pleasing to remember even this one day.

20 years ago I wished those words were true but had no experience of them.Today I understand them as a gentle wisdom not to judge and dismiss the content of a particular moment....