Deryn Collier's latest, A Real Somebody, is on our August Summer Reading List, and we've got three copies up for giveaway until the end of the month, along with all the other books on the list.

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I have never managed to read past page 25 of Two Solitudes, by Hugh MacLennan, that classic novel of the Québec experience, first published in 1945 and still read in English 101 classes everywhere. How can this be? I spent my formative years in Montreal after all, and received a thorough liberal arts education there. You’d think it would have been assigned to me in at least one class. But nope!

These days, I read broadly, for curiosity and enjoyment, and I’m sorry to say that there is nothing in the history-textbook-like opening chapters of Two Solitudes that will carry me through to whatever comes next.

When I set out to write A Real Somebody, my own novel set in Montreal in the 1940s, I doubled down on my efforts to get through Two Solitudes. And yet, I still could not get past the first few chapters. How could I expect to convey the world of mid-century Montreal, without having read this essential text?

This was a serious question in my mind, though I will admit my mind can get stuck on questions that seem imperative to me, and yet are easily dismissed by everyone else. I decided to turn the question around: What other novels have we all been missing out on, while the English teachers have been busy with Two Solitudes?

I was looking for books that would give me the literary foundation I was after, but that I actually wanted to read. I have compiled the very best titles from my literary research project for you here.

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Earth and High Heaven, by Gwethalyn Graham, completely captivated me when I read it last year. A friend casually mentioned it to me as an alternative to Two Solitudes and I still can’t believe I’d never come across it before. How is it not on all the reading lists?

This is the story of Erica Drake, a Protestant girl from the upper reaches of Westmount, who falls in love with Marc Reiser, a young Jewish lawyer. It is a love story, yes, but it is also a close inspection, and piece by piece dismantling, of the unspoken, polite and devastating discrimination that is baked into Canadian society. I’m using the present tense here on purpose. I believe this book is every bit as relevant today as it was in 1944, when it spent 37 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won the Governor General’s award the following year.

This classic was re-published by Cormorant Press in 2004, thank goodness. I would hate for such an important work to fall into obscurity. If you read this book and become obsessed with it, as I did, I can also recommend the biography of the author, which is equally compelling.

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Described as “an absorbing story of urban struggle,” No Crystal Stair, by Mairuth Sarsfield, is told through the eyes of Marion, a Black single mother of three, who can only find work if she passes as white. Originally published in 1993, featured on Canada Reads in 2005, and republished in 2021, it depicts vignettes of life and community events in Little Burgundy throughout the war years, like the Union United Church summer picnic, with energy and hopefulness.

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There’s a dream-like quality to The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant, by Michel Tremblay, a sometimes hilarious and often strange story of the members of a large French-Canadian family living on the Plateau in the 1940s, where each family member is an extension of the whole. Each individual reaches out into the world and comes back to the walk-up they all inhabit. Deep in the world of French Montreal, the other solitude—les anglais—shows its creeping presence in the men’s reticence to go to war to defend England, and the fact that all the women get off the bus at the same stop, before it reaches the English part of town. This honest and uncomfortable read is dripping with descriptions of pregnancy, as every woman on the street seems to be pregnant that spring.

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Widely regarded as a Canadian classic, The Tin Flute, by Gabrielle Roy, was first published in French in 1945 and tells a heart-wrenching story of poverty, survival and too many children in working class St. Henri in the lead up to and early years of World War II. Florentine Lacasse supports her ten siblings by waitressing, while her mother despairs at having more children and her father is defeated by his own impulsiveness. Torn between her desperate love for Jean Lévesque, and the more practical future promised by Emmanuel Létourneau, Florentine must choose. This novel is a study of the stark reality of life during “La Grande Noirceur” period of Quebec’s history, when ultra-conservatism, minimal social services, and adherence to the dictates of the Catholic Church prevailed under Premier Maurice Duplessis.

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There’s a scene at the end of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, by Mordechai Richler, where Duddy finally gets what he’s been after for the whole novel, and realises it’s not enough, and that it will never be enough. “A man without land is nothing. That’s what you always told me. Well, I’m a somebody. A real somebody.”

I had already named my novel when I re-read Duddy Kravitz a few years ago, but this bit of serendipity delighted me. Duddy is one of those unforgettable characters and this novel is worth reading again and again for the dialogue alone. In terms of Montreal fiction, it gives us an insider view of the Jewish community in the 1930s and 1940s, and one young man’s desperate pursuit of his own dream, at any cost, pushing against the established order and turning his back on everything, and everyone, who has helped him along the way.

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One thing I learned in my research of the 1940s was that sex between dating couples was surprisingly common, considering how taboo it was to have a baby out of wedlock. This topic, which the characters in The Home for Unwanted Girls, by Joanna Goodman grapple with, might be compelling enough on its own, but Goodman takes us even further. During the Duplessis years, Catholic orphanages could get three times the funding for their charges if they became mental institutions instead. (What? But wait, it’s true!) I read the story of Maggie and Elodie, the daughter she gave up for adoption and who became one of Duplessis’ orphans, in just a few sittings. I could not tear myself away from this book until it was done.

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In researching this next book, I learned that Mad Shadows, by Marie-Claire Blais, is required reading on many curricula, and plenty of students, forced to read this very slim tome, hated every page. I read it during my “Gothic CanLit” phase of researching  A Real Somebody and I loved it for its visceral descriptions of what happens when a character is no longer able to repress their emotions, as dictated by society and the Church. Can a person literally expire from emotion? There is an entire arm of Canadian literature that explores this theme—I’m thinking here of the work of Anne Hébert and Gabrielle Roy in French, Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, and others in English—but I chose Mad Shadows as the representative text for this list. Maybe if you are invited, not forced, to read it, you’ll enjoy this emotional fever dream of a novel as much as I did.

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My list is getting a little heavy. Let’s lighten things up a little with Nosy Parker, by Lesley Crewe, the story of Audrey Parker who moves to Montreal’s Notre-Dame-de-Grace (NDG) neighbourhood just as Expo ‘67 is getting underway. Right this very minute, I am in the midst of spending three weeks living in NDG, and while reading this novel was no doubt enhanced by my location-specific experience, I don’t think you need to be spending the summer in Montreal to enjoy this book. Though it might be cliched, I have to call Audrey Parker intrepid as she sets out to meet, help, intercept, spy on and connect her various neighbours and family members. She’s an anglo-Canadian Harriet the Spy for grown ups. I alternated between laughing out loud and weeping as I read this book. I am so excited to have discovered Lesley Crewe, and to know she has written a whole slough of books I can now dig into!

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An autobiographical novel in short, lyrical chapters, Ru, by Kim Thuy, tells the story of a 10-year old Nguyen An Tinh, who flees the Vietnam War with her family, lives in a refugee camp, and arrives in the Montreal suburb of Granby in the 1970s. The story also captures the voice of current-day Tinh, who grapples with her son’s diagnosis of Autism. This book is tinged with the unreachable, and a yearning for belonging. It has won many awards and was a Canada Reads pick in 2017. As is my habit, I devoured it in one sitting, but I think a more moderate person might enjoy reading it in small sips, allowing the poetic prose to sink in.

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My focus for this list is historical fiction, but given my crime writing roots, I would be remiss not to mention some of my favourite crime writers writing about Montreal, such as Catherine McKenzie, John McFetridge and Peter Kirby. Luckily for all of us, there is Montreal Noir, a collection of crime stories contributed by these, and many other writers. Edited by Jacques Filippi and John McFetridge, this book is such a wild ride, each story gripping, and dark and unique. Many of these authors are well-known in Québec, but their books are not always available in English. Geneviève Lefebvre, Arjun Basu and Martin Michaud are just a few of the authors whose books I want to explore further after reading this superb collection of stories.

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I will end this list with another admission: I rarely read the Canada Reads books. At least not the year they are nominated. If a book is on that list, I figure it’s going to do fine. I’ll go looking for other books to love, ones that did not make the list—the underdogs, I suppose. But the premise of Hotline, by Dimitri Nasrallah, which follows Muna Heddad, a new immigrant from Lebanon as she finds work at a weight loss call centre in Montreal in the 1980s, was irresistible to me. I am very glad I broke my own rule! Dimitri Nasrallah’s prose conveys this story, and Muna, with quiet excellence. It is compelling and totally engrossing. You will cheer Muna on, while worrying about her every minute. Nasrallah has said that the story is loosely based on his own mother’s story. Having written from the point of view of my great-aunt in A Real Somebody, I marvel at the compassion, presence of mind and emotional complexity that would be involved in writing your own mother’s story.

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Learn more about A Real Somebody:

From author Deryn Collier comes a smart, charming postwar historical novel based on the true story of an aspiring writer who dares to dream big.

Montreal, 1947. To support her once-prosperous family, June Grant joins a steno pool in a prestigious advertising firm. For June, it’s hard to imagine having the kind of life her parents want—the kind of life her sister Daisy has, with a well-off husband and two precocious kids.

But Daisy might not be a picture-perfect housewife after all. As June makes her own waves in the advertising world, she probes a hidden side of her sister’s life.

June’s discoveries upend everything she thought she knew about her sister while challenging her own inner conflict about pursuing her dreams versus living up to expectations. Being a dutiful housewife might mean something else entirely.

Based on the true story of the author’s aunt, A Real Somebody charts the journey of a talented young writer who dares to break the conventions of her time during one pivotal season of her life.