Reviews

The French Quarter

Geist Staff
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In his new book, The French Quarter (Macfarlane, Walter & Ross), Ron Graham sets out to illuminate French-English relations in Canada by exploring the French-Canadian side of his own family. Sounds promising, and sets us up brilliantly with a description of his Westmount childhood, comparing the domination of Quebec to India under the Raj. But alas, instead of elaborating this theme, he goes on to deliver a rather pedestrian summary of 300 years of Quebec history which will come as old news to anyone remotely familiar with the subject. This is journalism trying to become literature, and failing. What Graham really has on his mind is revealed in his final chapters wherein he indulges a rather cranky but all-too-familiar sense of grievance at the hard lot of Anglos in Quebec these days. Mordecai Richler without the jokes; which is to say, pretty tame stuff indeed.

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