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The Exile & the Sacred Travellers

by Marie-Clair Blais

There’s a tempation, once a writer becomes an icon, to publish anything they have written. Unfortunately, The Exile & the Sacred Travellers by Marie-Claire Blais gives in to that temptation. The book’s nine stories and one novella are interesting primarily as a testament to the development of a writer whose other published work is far superior. What’s worse, translator Nigel Spencer, who otherwise does a decent job throughout, serves Blais very badly in the first story.

The introductory essay by Ronald B. Hatch informs the reader that the story, “The New School Mistress,” was intended to be part of a sequel to Blais’s A Season In the Life of Emmanuel, which won the Prix Médicis in 1966. It is, says Hatch, Blais’s first attempt at writing in “joual,” the Quebec-based French dialect. Unfortunately, the translation makes the heroine sound like a cross between Frank McCourt and Marg Delahunty of This Hour Has 22 Minutes fame, while the story itself will interest few aside from Blais fanatics.

The American critic Edmund Wilson, who “discovered” Blais in the early 1960s, compared the novella that ends this book, “The Sacred Travellers,” with Virginia Woolf’s work. Perhaps: the story is told from multiple viewpoints, is lyrical in places, and clearly was written by a young woman of immense talent. But Blais would go on to experiment with these techniques far more successfully later in her career.

The eight other stories collected here were published between 1969 and 1989. They show Blais responding to the spirit of the times, and to the United States, where she has spent much time since her early success. This is a side to Blais’s writing of which many Canadians may be unaware. As such, the collection is a valuable addition to any library seeking to document trends in Canadian literature. But if you’re reading strictly for pleasure, give the first story a miss.

 

Reviewer: Mary Soderstrom

Publisher: Ronsdale Press

DETAILS

Price: $15.95

Page Count: 180 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 0-921870-79-5

Released: Oct.

Issue Date: 2000-12

Categories: Fiction: Novels

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