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Book highlights our best qualities
Book Review
By Derryll White
Shrier, Howard (2013). Miss Montreal.
I read Howard Shrier’s ‘High Chicago’ quite a while ago, and remember being pleased that another erudite Canadian had joined Giles Blunt in the Canadian mystery genre. It was pleasurable to come across the references to Canadian culture and thought. So when ‘Miss Montreal’ hit the shelves at Lotus Books I felt compelled to buy a copy.
Shrier has won back-to-back Arthur Ellis awards, which was an early indicator of the level of writing to expect. The promise was fulfilled, with strong characters and wonderful segments placing the reader in both Toronto and Montreal. He surprised me with the penetrating insights into Quebec life and the changing pressures wrought by immigration.
Shrier keeps the dialogue moving light and fast. Jonah Geller, lead investigator at World Repairs, is witty and informed. Shrier has opinions on what is happening politically in Canada, and his character Geller voices them clearly. In one of the back notes Shrier identifies Quebec’s political parties as “the gift that keep on giving” to a writer.
Howard Shrier is a polished storyteller and ‘Miss Montreal’ is a great read. It deals with real current issues of immigration and racism, of Quebec’s innate desire to command its own destiny. But most of all the book highlights the best qualities we have – loyalty, friendship, love. It made me want to reach out and touch those close friends I have, and maybe pull in one or two more. The end lyrics from Blue Rodeo’s song ‘Montreal’ was the icing on the cake. I am definitely seeking out more of Howard Shrier’s work
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Excerpts from the novel:
QUEBEC – “For more than 50 years, we have been building a welfare state we can no longer afford. And while I admire France on many levels, this is one aspect of their society we have been fools to emulate. Providing everything to everyone at every stage of life. And because of these expenditures, along with declining revenues, our debt now stands at fifty-five per cent of our gross domestic product.”
MUSLIMS: “Here’s my take on them… it’s very straight on. My people were immigrants, same as them. Or you, for that matter. My mother’s parents came here in the fifties, my father’s, the Irish side, back in the eighteen-eighties. And they had their problems fitting in but did they try to make everyone do everything their way and fucking gripe about the country that took them in? No. They tried to fit in, shut up and took their lumps, and tried to do better by their kids.”
MONTREAL: More than a few of Montreal’s highways and bridges had shed pieces of concrete rather suddenly of late. At one point, four of the five bridges linking the island to the mainland had to be closed for inspection or repair. I hoped the patchwork held as we drove through. Montreal’s construction industry was notoriously corrupt even by the bottomed-out standards of that trade.
BILINGUALISM: Here’s the thing about learning French in Canada.
If you don’t live in Quebec, the main reason you learn it is so you can speak to your countrymen there, and they can speak to you. In this you are likely to fail miserably because they teach a neutral, international French in Ontario schools. My teachers were from France, Belgium, Switzerland and the francophone parts of Ontario. None came from Quebec. They spoke the kind of French that would help you get around Paris just fine. A lilting, musical French that enunciated every syllable like it was the last arcane whisper of the secret to eternal life. The French spoken in Quebec is rougher, faster, with its own pronunciation, rhythm and slang. The street version, joual, even more so.
QUEBECOIS: “When you first meet someone who is different from you, different from all the guys you have been with, you think how fresh it is. Here is someone who is not full of anger, resentments, who isn’t wasting his life being a student forever, or plotting the next revolution on Rue. St. Denis. Here is someone who is funny and real and free of all the history we carry in Quebec.”
SEX – Jesus, he had to stop thinking about it. Sometimes had to disappear into the dingy little bathroom at the back and masturbate as fast as he could.
If he and Esther didn’t set a wedding date soon, he thought his head or his body would explode, maybe both in quick succession.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
