The Tin Flute, by Gabrielle Roy

I have always loved Gabrielle Roy's writings. Her short story "The Move" was in my grade 11 reader, and I have read nearly every one of her novels since. I found that her voice was so akin to mine, that she had put into words just how I see the world.

But I had not read her most famous book, The Tin Flute, until now.

I was surprised not to find the innocent optimism, the "enchantment and sorrow" that had breathed from her other novels, at first. The conditions of St. Henri were very harsh. I did not warm to Jean Levesque or Florentine very much, nor their cruel game of love. But I was intrigued - the plot itself was already very impelling, with Florentine placing her fate in the biting Jean Levesque's hands. I was annoyed, therefore, when the focus shifted to Manuel and then to Rose-Anna -- I do not like novels with multiple narrators and main characters, because then your sympathy for the protagonist is divided.

I did not understand Florentine - who is brazen and shallow - or Manuel, who is a little like Walter Blythe of Rilla of Ingleside in that he believes in a greater good to come from the war. I could understand cynical Jean Levesque, but it was impossible to like him because he was willfully brutal. But I did sympathize with every one of them, and Rose-Anna most of all - Rose-Anna, who must be like Gabrielle Roy's mother whom her other stories focus on, like my mother who is weighed by a tendency to see tragedy everywhere. I read on, only wanting the love story of Jean and Florentine, but every chapter was a blow. I began to despair of a happy ending, and found this story of the slums of St. Henri very cruel. I was revolted that things could be so dire.

But in true Gabrielle Roy fashion, there is "borrowed happiness" (Bonheur d'Occasion) at the end.

This book made me want to write. I dreamed a whole caste of personnages representative of the society I knew. I wrote last year that I should like to write like Pasternak - but I should like even more to have a voice like Gabrielle Roy's. There are stories I know, from all my life, clamouring to be written.