2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist, Part 4

Posted 5 November, 2007 in Literary Criticism, Scotiabank Giller Prize |

A Secret Between Us, by Daniel Poliquin, trans. by Donald Winkler. Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95 paper, 296 pp., ISBN: 978-1-55365-272-4.

Previous Scotiabank Giller nominations/wins: None

Other Awards: 2007, Ottawa Book Award (La Kermesse)

2001, Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing (In the Name of the Father: An Essay on Quebec Nationalism)

1998, Trillium Award (The Straw Man)

From the publisher: “A startling evocation of a pivotal era in Canadian history, from one of French Canada’s most esteemed writers.”

From reviews: “This kind of thing lives or dies by its writing, and here, at least in this translation, the prose is mannered and monotonous. In the end, it’s all just one damn thing after another, with the characters weaving in and out of each other’s lives over the years, everyone’s dreams unrealized and their lives inconsequential.” — Quill & Quire

“Though Essiambre and the secret between them does form one plotline in the novel, La Kermesse is the better title, with its nod to the church (kerk/mis) and to the funfairs it most typically suggests. Lusignan is the local character in one of those fairs, and this book is his midway.” — Globe and Mail

Representative passage: “We played Brébeuf after Sunday mass. Naturally, I was often the Jesuit and Gertrude was Mother Marie de l’Incarnation, transfixed by my suffering. She also had the right to go to the kitchen for biscuits to feed the famished Iriquois. For authenticity’s sake Hector and Donatien stripped to the waist, and I allowed myself to be tied to the stake, saying, ‘Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do.’ We never failed to tell the story as we went along, as children will: ‘Me, I’m wounded in the chest, you’re attacking me with the tomahawk.’

“There too things went badly from time to time. One day when it was Hector’s turn to be Brébeuf, he who had been a decidedly cruel Iroquois, Donatien and I tied him solidly to the torturers’ stake and left him out in the rain for an hour. Hector Brébeuf yowled, ‘Come untie me, damned asshole Iroquois! I’m going to tell the good Lord!’ On that occasion the good Lord took the form of their father, who saw red when he got angry. I escaped in time.

“Another time it was their mother who punished them, because Donatien had invented a new torture that consisted of tying up Father Brébeuf so he couldn’t move, and farting in his face. That day I was the Jesuit.”

My assessment: If you’re like me, you’ll notice something about the passage quoted above that instantly sets A Secret Between Us apart from the other books on this year’s Scotiabank Giller shortlist: it’s funny. Not funny in a droll, chuckling-wryly-over-tea-and-crumpets kind of way, but really funny. This alone puts Poliquin’s novel in a category by itself vis à vis the other shortlisted books.

The first-person narrator of A Secret Between Us, Lusignan, is a drunk and a liar and a thief. This makes his narration somewhat suspect; he encompasses many of the traits of the quintessential unreliable narrator. But it also makes his narration lively and enjoyable: the reader laughs at his jokes and his bad behaviour, all the while engaged in an enterprise of trying to decide how far he can be trusted. Truth, for Lusignan, is a malleable quality; as a novelist, he says, “I rewrote history according to my tastes. All I needed was a credulous public for everything to be true.”

The novel takes place during the first half of the twentieth century, and travels from the trenches of World War I to Ottawa’s LeBreton Flats. But this is not the kind of ponderous, oh-so-earnest novel that is typical of Canadian historical fiction. At least, not entirely.

The novel has a flaw, one that almost does it in. Although Lusignan’s own narration is engaging, it is frequently interrupted to make way for long letters written by Amalia Driscoll, the lover of Essiambre d’Argenteuil, a lieutenant in the war, with whom Lusignan shares the titular secret. Driscoll’s letters are everything the rest of the novel is not: plodding, dull, overly detailed, and tedious.

There is a technical term for using letters, journals, diary entries, etc. to convey information in a novel: cheating. Novelists usually resort to these devices because they can’t think of a more creative or integrated way to get this information across in the story. In A Secret Between Us, this problem is compounded by the way in which the letters force the narrative — which was ticking along so well under its own steam — to a virtual standstill for their duration.

Still, while far from perfect, Poliquin’s novel is certainly the most enjoyable of the bunch thus far.

Next: The Assassin’s Song

2 comments to “2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist, Part 4”

Claire Cameron, November 6th, 2007 at 8:27 pm:

• I’m enjoying these. Where on this website can I place my bet?

Steven W. Beattie, November 6th, 2007 at 10:01 pm:

• TSR does not officially endorse gambling. However, I’d be happy to act as bookie, subject to a small handling fee off the top.

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