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[An extract]

QUEBEC -- Quebec lost two important figures last week, both identified -- in totally different ways -- as pioneers in realism, artistic and political.

When Gabrielle Roy published Bonheur d'Occasion in 1945, she brought a fresh new vision to Quebec literature, a gritty urban sensibility which -- with Roger Lemelin's novels, published at the same time ( brought Quebec literature from the rural rang and into the inner city.

Born and raised in Manitoba, where she taught for eight years, she had left for Europe in 1937, and spent two years living in London, Paris and Provence. Coming to Montreal in 1939, she worked as a journalist and, most important, walked, watched and listened to the poverty-plagued neighborhood of St. Henri react to the coming of the Second World War.

That provided her with the context for Bonheur d'Occasion, the tragic ironies of the war providing an escape from the claustrophobic poverty of the Depression in working-class Montreal. The novel was not only a critical success, winning the Governor General's Award and the French Prix Femina, but also a runaway bestseller.

The actual plot of Bonheur d'Occasion (literally "second-hand happiness," the novel was translated as The Tin Flute, and became a bestseller in English as well) is hardly innovative. Florentine Lacasse, like Maria Chapdelaine before her, has to choose between the elusive, romantic, impatient Jean Lévesque and the reliable, less exciting Emmanuel Letourneau.

Emotional response

But the striking quality of the novel comes from its sensuality. Poverty was not an intellectual abstraction for Gabrielle Roy, but a series of levels of fear, constructed and conveyed by the senses: sights, smells, sounds, textures, tastes, each one provoking its emotional response. Her evocation of the physical corruption of poverty is remin[i]scent of George Orwell, who had the same kind of sensitivity to the smells and humiliations of deprivation.

Florentine Lacasse has been shaped by her poverty, as was her mother, the saintly Rose-Anna, her incompetent father, her dying baby brother Daniel and the rest of the scarred family of 11 children. The war comes as another fear -- and the single escape.

Bonheur d'Occasion was Roy's first novel, and she went on to write another 10 books, some, like Alexandre Chênevert (The Cashier in English) dealing with Montreal, and others, like La Petite Poule d'Eau (Where Nests the Water Hen), Rue Deschambault (Street of Riches) and Ces Enfants de Ma Vie (Children of My Heart) located in Manitoba.

Alexandre Chênevert and Ces Enfants de Ma Vie also won her the Governor General's Award. But none of her later books had the stunning impact of Bonheur d'Occasion.

This was not a tragic failure to win what she had achieved in her first book. Her books reflected her gentle wisdom as she grew older, and nothing could have repeated the shock of recognition for Quebec in seeing the urban society that it had become.

As Ben-Zion Shek wrote in his study of the French Canadian novel, "Bonheur d'Occasion was an outstanding creation of realistic art in French Canada." It can be read now as a kind of spiritual godmother to the work of both Michel Tremblay and David Fennarrio.

Gabrielle Roy died just as the film Bonheur d'Occasion had its first showing in Moscow. This is the second film this year of a classic Quebec novel, following Maria Chapdelaine. Maria Chapdelaine, while beautiful to look at, suffered from the flaws at the core of the original novel. It will be interesting to see if Bonheur d'Occasion succeeds in capturing the intensity of physical detail of the original, and conveying that particular sense of anxiety and deprivation that is at the heart of the novel.

But the novel has a strength that will survive regardless of the film....

GRAHAM FRASER

Source: Montreal Gazette, July 19, 1983.

By permission of The Gazette, Montreal.