An Unerring Eye for the Ordinary

A certain kind of Canadian novel has become so common it is now a cliché, and is made fun of and complained about by critics and novelists, even if still widely enjoyed by reading groups and prize-giving committees. It usually begins with a tragic or unexpected death, follows a trail of grief and redemptive healing, and constantly refers to the past, either the protagonist’s own early years or that of their parents or grandparents. Memory and loss. Such a novel is The Apple House, Gillian Campbell’s debut.

It begins with a flashback to the protagonist’s childhood, and thereafter alternates back and forth between her coping with her husband’s sudden death in a car accident and her memories of growing up in a small village on the West Island of Montreal. These flashbacks to the past, however, are written in the present tense, while the main story, which takes place in the fictional “now,” is presented in the traditional past tense. This inversion makes little sense and actually detracts from the impact, the assault on common sense undermining the reader’s faith in the narrator.

The community is bilingual, and although the tale supposedly takes place in the 1970s, during some of the years of greatest political strife between French and English—the October Crisis of 1970, the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976 and the referendum in 1980—these issues have no bearing on the lives of the characters. All of them accept the dual nature of their settlement as given, getting along as neighbours and learning to communicate with each other without any rancour, even if there is something of a divide between them. It is simply not mentioned. Given the time and place, this absence is striking. It is hard to believe that these people, a short commute from the demonstrations, parades and, yes, riots that took place in the city of Montreal, had no knowledge or opinion, never read about any of it in the papers or took notice of the radio and television news reports. It is as if the village were completely cut off from the rest of the world and lived in a space where political and language issues were kept somehow at bay.

Of course, Campbell simply is not interested in the language issue, and it is childish to complain that a writer has not delivered the book a reader expects. But it strains credulity. Language only emerges as an issue not because the protagonist, Imogene Laviolette, an Anglo, has married a francophone, but because in the aftermath of his death, her painstakingly acquired command of French suddenly deserts her and she unconsciously reverts to speaking only in English, even with her French relatives and employees. In other words, it appears simply as a convenient plot device, but otherwise politely remains invisible. This complete unawareness of the French fact was itself a symptom of the language strife that engulfed the province at the time.

As an aside, however, Campbell is not alone in this. English-language writers in Quebec have ever been loath to broach the language issue in their fiction. Even Mordecai Richler saved his deliciously pointed anti-separatist barbs for articles in Toronto publications or foreign newspapers. The anglo- phone portrayal of the Québécois is usually either as exotic foreigners suitable for fleeting romantic affairs, as in Richler and Leonard Cohen, or worse, as cardboard buffoons such as in Ray Smith’s The Man Who Hated Emily Brontë or William Weintraub’s The Underdogs. In this respect, Gillian Campbell’s French-Canadian characters are much more realistic and in fact quite sympathetic, coming to her protagonist’s aid more than once. The language barrier between her characters is for both sides an inconvenience, not a sore point.

Campbell spends an inordinate amount of time, especially early in the book, simply describing things or delivering endless lists, as if she is either trying to remind herself of the atmosphere of that time and place, where she herself grew up, or worse, merely attempting to fill more pages. There is just no good reason for so much detail that has no bearing either on what comes after or indeed on what is actually taking place. Similarly, the group of children in the flashback sequences is larger than needed for the purposes of the novel and could easily have been reduced, which would have avoided finding a reason for them to move away as adults, only to be awkwardly hauled back years later for the funeral, where they again contribute little to the resolution.

Imogene, the protagonist, and her husband had finally been planning to move from a small apartment and buy the titular Apple House at the time of the fatal accident, and it is a surprise only to Imogene that she turns out to be pregnant after her husband has been taken from her. Adding to her woes, the village drug dealer has usurped the house from under her and hired Imogene’s developmentally challenged brother to care for his vicious dog. Initially Imogene convinces herself that she cannot bring the baby to term, but when she tells her mother she is pregnant, the mother assumes she will have it. Eventually Imogene comes around, apparently simply because that is what others expect. Never does she consider the effect on the child of growing up fatherless.

The drug dealer, Swen, is a childhood friend of her dead husband’s but not, as Imogene has to continually remind people, of hers. He is also the only character who is not by default nice; there are a scattered few village eccentrics, and the children (in the flashbacks) occasionally play the cruel games children will, but Swen alone is responsible for any crime or bad will necessary to generate story. Imogene even blames him, without real proof, for selling marijuana to the drunk driver who killed her husband. When his dog inevitably bites the simple-minded brother and the authorities come looking, Swen burns down the Apple House, presumably to avoid his (implied) grow-op being discovered, and disappears.

With the villain defeated and herself convinced she is happy to bear her husband’s child alone, Imogene finally accepts what her life has become, returns to work in the village shoe shop she owns, and declares she “can’t think of anywhere better to live.” Although it is meant to signal her growth and acceptance, to deliver a happy ending to a tragic story, it belies the dearth of imagination invested in the tale.

Campbell’s prose is simple and clean, but never elegant, and she has an unerring eye for the ordinary. This extends from her vocabulary through her over-numerous descriptions and lists of objects, all the way to her choice of scene, event and subject. Everything is carefully planned and in place, no risks are taken with the narrative and therefore no surprises are forthcoming, and as a result, there is almost no tension. Campbell’s greatest assets as a writer are her patience and exactitude, but a little more imagination and daring might have made a more satisfying read.