Novel
Two Solitudes
Hugh MacLennan · 1945
Synopsis
Saint-Marc-des-Érables, a parish on the Saint Lawrence dominated by its priest, during the Great War. Athanase Tallard, seigneur and member of parliament, wants to build a factory with Huntly McQueen, an English-speaking businessman from Montreal; the priest opposes it, the parish ostracises him, and conscription sets him against his eldest son Marius. Twenty years later, his son Paul, born of a second marriage and at ease in both languages, wants to write a novel and loves Heather Methuen, a young Englishwoman of Montreal whose mother does not want him.
Context
The novel takes as its pivot the conscription crisis, which set a massively opposed Quebec against a favourable English Canada, and whose riots of 1918 left four dead in the streets of Quebec. The title comes from a sentence by Rilke placed as an epigraph, in which love consists in two solitudes protecting, touching and greeting each other: diverted from its romantic meaning, the phrase has entered the country's political language, even in the inaugural speech of a governor general, in 2005. A film was made from it in 1978.
Who it is for
A long novel with a classical construction; the context of conscription is necessary to grasp what is at stake.
Prizes and reception
Governor General's Award for 1945; translated into Spanish as early as 1947, into French in 1963 and into several other languages.
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