Randy Boyagoda read Hilary Mantel's latest and was inspired to revisit these two classic Canadian novels
Randy Boyagoda is a literary critic, English professor, novelist and The Next Chapter columnist.
He read Hilary Mantel's latest The Mirror & the Light, the final novel of Hilary Mantel's popular Tudor trilogy chronicling the life of the influential English minister Thomas Cromwell in the court of King Henry VIII.
He spoke to Shelagh Rogers about The Mirror & the Light and how it inspired him to re-read two classic Canadian historical novels: Black Robe by Brian Moore and Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler.
The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
"I would say the boldest thing about Hilary Mantel's Tudor trilogy is her decision to write in the present tense. It goes against our expectation of what it means to read an historical novel and the idea that you're going back in time.
"But she writes with such immediacy in the present tense — and it's so meticulously researched. There's beautiful descriptions of Cromwell as a charismatic and engaging figure.
I would say the boldest thing about Hilary Mantel's Tudor trilogy is her decision to write in the present tense.
"Mantel clearly loves Cromwell and loves to write about him. The way she unfolds politics and the marital politics around Henry and his wives. It's done with such intensity because it is indeed happening as you read it."
Black Robe by Brian Moore
"This 1980s book, it tells you a lot more about 1985 than it does about 17th-century Canada. It's a well-intentioned attempt to suggest a mutual dignity and significance to the encounter of Jesuits and First Nations and Indigenous peoples.
"What he was trying to do was suggest a kind of parity between them. But it seems very well-intentioned and very much from an earlier moment in our ongoing conversation about Truth and Reconciliation. He wanted, in many ways, to try to represent the Indigenous experience in ways that weren't romantic or demonizing.
This 1980s book, it tells you a lot more about 1985 than it does about 17th-century Canada.
"The thing that comes across most is his emphasis on swearing — on a casual kind of intense earthy language which was his attempt in the mid-1980s to convey a more democratic natural and lived-out way of engaging the world around you, than the more stilted romanticized versions of Indigenous experience you'd see an earlier settler account in literature.
"It very much feels dated now."
Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
"The thing that is the most interesting about this book was the way in which Richler tried, very intentionally, to find a story of Canada that wasn't a French and English story. The novel is a satirical magic-realist exploration of encounter — in this case between Inuit peoples and a ne'er do well Jewish guy from England who comes to Canada.
The thing that is the most interesting about this book now was the way in which Richler tried very intentionally to find a story of Canada that wasn't a French and English story.
"Richler uses this figure as a way to reimagine a beginning to Canada that doesn't involve French and English politics. He's looking at the Indigenous and the immigrant experience together — but he would probably get in trouble for his appropriation of a trickster figure in many ways.
"The novel was initially most controversial because of associations that many were making between the Gursky family and the Bronfman family — I don't think that feels nearly as provocative now. But a desire to tell a different kind of Canadian story in the late 1980s — right around the time of Meech Lake, of Confederation tensions, of Richler's own very direct and controversial engagement of Quebec language laws —seems to be pressuring what's going on in the novel."
Randy Boyagoda's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
