{"id":11442,"date":"2015-12-02T06:58:29","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T14:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11442"},"modified":"2015-11-30T12:20:32","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T20:20:32","slug":"lit-matters-the-unromantic-romances-of-gabrielle-roy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/12\/02\/lit-matters-the-unromantic-romances-of-gabrielle-roy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Matters<\/em>: The unromantic romances of Gabrielle Roy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s previous $20 bill had a quotation on it: \u201cCould we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?\u201d The quotation is from Quebec novelist Gabrielle Roy\u2019s The Hidden Mountain<\/i>, a tender yet unrelenting look at both Canada\u2019s northern wilderness and the interior wilderness of a life spent pursuing art.<\/p>\n

Roy grew up on the prairies but spent the majority of her working life in Quebec. She became a literary sensation when her first novel The Tin Flute<\/i> (French title: Bonheur d\u2019occasion<\/i>) was published in 1945. Although not as well known outside of Quebec, Roy is one of the most important Quebec authors of the 20th century; she\u2019s won both the Governor General\u2019s award and the prestigious Prix Femina<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Like Alice Munro\u2019s Ontario and Alistair MacLeod\u2019s Maritimes, Roy\u2019s portraits of Quebec do more than simply paint a landscape or describe a culture. Instead, they recreate the world of her characters in vivid, compassionate detail.<\/p>\n

The Tin Flute<\/i>, <\/i>set in the working-class Montreal neighbourhood of Saint-Henri, depicts life as a struggle to rise above the ignorance and poverty that trap its residents in cycles of abuse, loneliness, and sorrow. It is also the story of the search for love and a look at the forces that both hinder and help us along the way.<\/p>\n

Roy\u2019s voice was new to Quebec literature because she wrote about Montreal suburbs and rural villages with a tenderness that didn\u2019t romanticize or sentimentalize. She spent her whole life in the pursuit of an authentic way of seeing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe life of a writer is tragic,\u201d she once wrote. \u201cThe more we advance, the farther there is to go and the more there is to say, the less time there is to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabrielle Roy must-read:
\n<\/b>The Tin Flute<\/i>
\n(Public Library Central Branch: Paperback Fiction)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canada\u2019s previous $20 bill had a quotation on it: \u201cCould we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?\u201d The quotation is from Quebec novelist Gabrielle Roy\u2019s The Hidden Mountain, a tender yet unrelenting look at both Canada\u2019s northern wilderness and the interior wilderness of a life spent pursuing art. Roy grew up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-december-2-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11445,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11442\/revisions\/11445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}