Two Solitudes. Hugh MacLellan. 1945. (878 pages as Ebook, 480 as Paperback, 23 hours, 23 minutes as Audiobook))
This was, for me, a reread of a classic Canadian novel, written by a McGill professor of English, that I had first read perhaps 50 years ago. Set initially in a small village outside of Montreal in 1917, it spans the interwar years to September, 1939. The Two Solitudes of the title is usually interpreted as referring to the French Catholics and the English Protestants, but could equally refer to men and women, Americans and Canadians, the rich and the depression- era poor, or the exploited and the exploiters. Each fails to even try very hard to understand the other. Little has changed 83 years later.
The powerful controlling influence of the Catholic Church over every aspect of the lives of the quebecois is dramatically displayed, even in business deals, where they frequently clashed with the rich English Protestants from Ontario. (I recall an evangelical Baptist preacher in the late1950s condemning them from the pulpit, comparing them to despotic African dictators.) The 1917 conscription controversy and attitudes toward the war drove a deep wedge between the English Canadians and the francophone Quebeckers and even between members of families of the few Quebec French who supported it, including that of the federal MP Athanase Tallard. Some veterans provide dramatic descriptions of the horrors of Vimy Ridge and Passenchdaele.
The characters, clothing, geography, and weather are all described in intricate detail. There is no graphic sex, as befits the era, but lots of inuendo and expressions of lust. There are many delicious metaphors and pithy aphorisms like “Perhaps the basis of all conservatism was the tendency to identify the familiar with the excellent.”
Three other memorable quotations:
“His old face carried the expression of a man who never found it necessary to be intelligent but knew right from wrong.”
“What was love anyway but knowledge that you were not alone, with desire added?”
“His round head was balanced like a dome on his shoulders, his frizzy hair a horseshoe around his skull.”
I found that the endless rumination of characters about their lives, feelings, and strained relationships became a bit tiresome. The pages and pages of the conversations of a newlywed couple trying to outdo each other with ever more elaborate superlative praise for the other seemed quite soppy to me perhaps because in the family of my youth any public expression of affection or even more than mild praise was frowned upon.
Thanks, Vera.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/10.
The Passionate Reader 