Mairuth Sarsfield (1925–2013)

There is a great story to be told here, sadly this is not the author/book to tell it.
The lives of the Black people living in Montreal in the late 30's-early 40's is fairly unexplored. Where did they come from, when and why Montreal? - truly interesting questions, and surely many intriguing stories exist.

Sarsfield is not a writer, she is more like a historian, and that is how the book read. It felt like she had a list of every fact of history, every issue faced by Black Montrealers (and some Americans), every job they may have held etc. The list does not blend with the story so the "facts" come off as footnotes or items to be ticked off. Names are dropped - of streets, clubs, restaurants, famous Black entertainers of the time, fashion items of the time, foods of the community, foodsof the era, it just goes on and on.

Dialogue is awkward and stilted, characters speak lines of poetry - seriously! The characters rarely feel real, the all seem to come from another check-list: determined uptight mother, seductive other woman with a heart of gold, fiery preacher, wise older women, conflicted White man who is attracted to the Black woman who also plays bagpipes, it just goes on and on.
The Author dwells on insignificant scenes for pages, and then drops plot bombshells in randomly, with little explanation, they just don't make sense!
This book needed an editor - any editor, because it is just a let down to the people whose story deserves to be told - and told well! Waste of trees!… (más)

So I want to say upfront that I read this book mostly because somehow it ended up on my gay reads book list? And uh not to spoil anything, but I did not read any relationships that could be construed as gay, I don't think, unless you're counting the fact that Langston Hughes appears as like a Very Background Character? So if you, like me, had it up on one of those types of lists, uh... not that I could see.

That being said, this is one of those cases where I really really felt like knowing more about Canada in general and Quebec/Montreal in particular would have been helpful? I feel like I've read a lot of reviews where people are like "this is a gross misrepresentation of Black life in Montreal!" and I couldn't tell you if that was true or not. In a lot of ways, it feels like a book that is much older than it is--it was published in 1997, but there's some Baldwin-like aesthetic that Sarsfield really hits on, or maybe the like old melodramas (I'm thinking specifically of Imitation of Life, I think?) I literally flipped to the front matter to see when this book was published like 8 times over the course of reading the book.

But overall, I would say it wasn't a bad book--if that melodrama aesthetic was what Sarsfield was aiming for, I'd say she hit it out of the park in a major way! And if that kind of aesthetic is your thing, you probably really should check out this book! For the rest of us I'd say reading it is not the most necessary thing in the world, but it's not terrible either!… (más)

I don’t know why it is classified as an adult book. In my opinion it is a very good Young Adult book.

I enjoyed this book for what it was: a work of didactic fiction. Its definite aim is to raise awareness in the general public of Black hardships and accomplishments and help to build self-esteem in the Black community. In this way I think it is a successful book. I learned from it. Even though it deals with the same time in Canadian history as _The Tin Flute_ by Gabrielle Roy, and _The Fat Woman is Pregnant_ by Tremblay , and the same physical setting, it describes a different social milieu.

There is no plot really, or not enough of it, or perhaps it is not complicated enough, for an adult book. The language is choppy, and the style sometimes stifled and artificial. Some parts are better than others. By the end, it felt like the author found herself spending more time writing than she allotted for it, and had to cut out bits and pieces of information in a hurry. At least this was my impression. There were fragments that were written really well, some were plainly missing, and the whole was uneven.

I think the strength of the book was its characters. And, again let me preface it: perfect for a young adult book. The character sketches were good and done with compassion, even if too sugary sweet most of the time. There was no real character development to speak of unless I missed it.

It wasn’t a book I couldn’t put down. I even didn’t truly want to know what happened next. But it wasn’t a bad book. I know much more than I knew before I read it.… (más)