Mind Picker: My October

Reality boiled down to this in the end: the story you told. Everyone had one. No one could claim the right to the last word.

My October is a book about language and communication and discovering and protecting one's identity; and, for this purpose, what could be a more fitting setting than the multilingual west end Montreal neigbourhood of Saint-Henri? Luc Lévesque is a celebrated author -- the voice of his generation -- who witnessed and memorialised the October Crisis of 1970. Hannah is his Anglo wife (and the English translator of his books) who has essentially cut ties with her Toronto-based family to preserve family harmony. And Hugo is their fourteen-year-old son; a confused adolescent trying to figure out what this mixed parentage means for him. When Hannah is called away and Luc begins to suffer a mid-life crisis, Hugo's acting out at school blows the lid off of the slowly boiling pot of their lives.

Communication is so important here: Luc was the "voice of his generation" who is now frustrated by writer's block; Hannah rarely speaks up for herself, preferring to translate her husband's words; Hugo refuses to answer anyone's questions about his alarming actions; Hannah's father -- the formerly famous lawyer and special prosecutor against the FLQ -- has been rendered mute by a stroke; and while Hugo uses English as a weapon against his father, Luc uses French for the same purpose against the American therapist his wife has urged the family to see.

My October is also a wonderfully Canadian story -- I've never read fiction about the FLQ/October Crisis before (although Heather O'Neill's The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, also released this year, featured a character who was the folk singing "voice of his generation", but that was more about the votes for separation), and this includes a non-partisan overview of the events. The nationalist point of view is presented by Hugo's history teacher (who insists that the bombings and kidnapping weren't true terrorism) but the experience of the sole kidnapping victim, James Cross, is also included:

He described the room on Avenue des Récollets in the city's north end where he had spent fifty-nine days in captivity. He described how he had been forced to sit with his back to his captors. How he had been forbidden to look at them. If he turned reflexively at a noise, say, or an unexpected movement behind him, they panicked. The woman in the group, whom he now knew to be Jacques Lanctôt's sister, Louise Cossette-Trudel, would scream threats and cock the gun. He had become convinced that he would die…

"I've been a pawn," he said, looking at the camera. "A pawn in your history. Maybe now, I'll be a face. Not the British diplomat, not the imperialist, but a man. A husband. A father. A human brother."

Also mentioned often in My October is the Canadian classic The Tin Flute (a book I've long been meaning to get around to): Luc has often been called his generation's Gabrielle Roy as he also lives in and sets his books in Saint-Henri; Luc jumps at the opportunity to locate his new office in a building that was prominent in The Tin Flute; and, apparently, the structure of My October -- with multiple first-person perspectives -- echoes the classic. I do wonder if it would have been a richer experience if I had read The Tin Flute first, but I don't think it's necessary for understanding.

This is a thoroughly interesting and readable book with a few jumps in time that increase the intrigue factor. I don't know if I loved the ending, but when I finished and then reread the two prologues, I was entirely satisfied. I'm saddened to see that Claire Holden Rothman didn't make it to the Giller Prize shortlist with My October (maybe, in the end, it's too thematically similar to The Girl Who Was Saturday Night?) because I enjoyed it more than some that did make the cut, but I'm glad to see that she is in the running for the Governor General's Literary Award.