sewn paper
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Fiction/Literary
March 1999
240 pages
ISBN 0-88984-202-7
$18.95
The Man Who Loved
Jane Austen
Ray Smith
After fictional excursions abroad to Germany, France, Scotland, Italy, Africa,
and Australia, and back to the 1920s, the nineteenth century, and the Middle Ages,
Ray Smith has come home to English Montreal in the 1990s. The Man Who Loved
Jane Austen is a penetrating story of a Montreal with only the lingering
effervescence of its past, a
Montreal of loss, or regret, of sadness. A Montreal
where nationalism corrodes every event, every relationship, every soul. A Montreal
of lies and betrayal.
Smith's work combines astonishing inventiveness with a warm and
gregarious humanity.
His first book, Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada
(1969, reissued by The Porcupine's Quill in 1989), burst upon a largely
uncomprehending world in an explosion of post-modernist experimentation
and whimsy. The novel, Lord Nelson Tavern (1974) is an odyssey
of love and friendship; it conceals its equally innovative structures
behind a surface reality of poignant characters and memorable
incidents. Smith again extended his range with Century (1986),
a novel which explores the horrors and beauties of the modern world.
His most recent book, A Night at the Opera (The Porcupine's Quill, 1992),
is an exploration of the preposterous German city of Waltherrott, a delightful
cavalcade of fools and knaves, grouches and maniacs, frumps and tarts, heroes and clowns.
`Throughout the novel sombre subject matter is skillfully
offset by dry humour, creating a sense of balance. It is
from this place of equilibrium that Smith moves us with a
well-told story of a man's personal struggles, while
engaging us with astute social commentary on anglophones who
call Montreal home but who stay ``with the gas tank full''.' `This is a novel worth reading for the human story at its
core. Frank might be an infuriatingly flawed Everyman, but his
attempt to keep his precarious world together rings true.' `What makes The Man Who Loved Jane Austen Smith's best
work is the success with which he subordinates his formal
preoccupations to his characters and to his story which, in
its propulsive inevitability, is no less heartwrenching and,
ultimately, devastating.' `Watching the social forces around Frank buffet him
into what to most would be an unthinkable position
is watching a great tragedy unfold. All along, the
reader in her ironic position can see the injustices
and the scams, and rage against them, against Frank's
passivity now played out to a ridiculous extreme. Can
it really be that Frank is a metaphor for the anglo
in Quebec? Surely we are not so passive, so infantile,
so other? Even if the villains are caricatures, even
if the events seem too convenient at times, there is
enough in The Man Who Loved Jane Austen to shock us
into uneasy recognition of the anglos' complicity in
their own oppression.' `From the top-heavy bureaucracy of Quebec's floundering education
system to anglo angst and the slow but certain death of Montreal,
Smith reaps a sort of harsh literary revenge on all he sees
wrong with contemporary life in this city.' `The Man Who Loved Jane Austen is a slow, inexorable slide
into pain and loss. What makes following this decline worthwhile is Smith's
exacting prose. He captures Montreal in all its beauty and turmoil,
he captures academic life and family life.'
-- Kim Bourgeois, the Montreal Review of Books
-- Ian McGillis, the Montreal Gazette
-- Robert Reid, the Kitchener Record
-- Globe and Mail
-- The Westmount Examiner
-- Victoria Daily Times
photo by Burt Covit
His first book, a collection of short stories entitled Cape Breton is the
Thought Control Centre of Canada (1969), was one of the first works
of fiction to be published by the fledgeling House of Anansi.
His more recent works include the novels Lord Nelson Tavern and
A Night at the Opera which won the QSPELL Hugh
MacLennan Prize for Fiction.