I am woefully underread in the literature of French Canada. I saw this little book of short stories available from one of my favourite online booksellers so I thought it would be a good introduction to some of the great writers from one of Canada's founding races. Interestingly this book used to be part of the Lamont Library at Harvard College.

The stories are laid out chronologically according to when they were first published. So the first story is Rose Latulipe by Philippe Aubert de Gaspe which was a chapter in a book published in 1837. It's a rather dark tale about the Devil coming to a house party. The last story is by Michel Tremblay and it was published in 1978. I'm not sure if the editor intentionally chose another story about the Devil to end the book but Tremblay's story is called The Devil and the Mushroom. In it the Devil discovers people don't know about war so he draws a big picture of a mushroom on a wall in a tavern to illustrate war and then he convinces a young man to kill a neighbour starting humanity on the path to where the mushroom will be familiar to all as a symbol of war.

Many of these stories deal with religion in some way. I think that is probably indicative of the importance of the Catholic church for French-Canadians in the 19th and early 20th century. This book was published in 1983 so I don't think it represents contemporary French-Canadian literature. Only a few of the writers represented in this collection are still alive (Marie-Claire Blais, Roch Carrier, Claude Jasmin, Naim Kattan, Antonine Maillet, Michel Tremblay) and all of them are septuagenarians or octogenarians. I believe the younger crop of French-Canadian writers such as Dany Lafreniere, Nicolas Dickner and Kim Thuy have less religious context in their writing.

I was glad to see that one of the stories included in this collection was by Gabrielle Roy and was set in Manitoba. Ely, Ely, Ely recounts Roy's experience of taking the train to a small town (surely Elie) in order to get material on some of the different ethnic groups who settled the prairies. It is important to remember that French-Canadians can be found outside of Quebec.

Very nice introduction to French-Canadian writing and I am now keen to read some more. ( )