Book Review of The Tin Flute
Book Review of Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute
The Tin Flute. Volume 1. By Gabrielle Roy. Translated by Philip Stratford. Toronto: McClelland and Steward Ltd. 1945. ISBN: 978-0-7710-9388-3. Pp. 400. $21.95
Gabrielle Roy’s 1945 book of fiction titled The Tin Flute follows the lives of the impoverished Lacasse family living in the Saint-Henri district of Montreal during World War II. The novel tells the separate struggles of Rose-Anna and her eldest daughter Florentine Lacasse to survive the poverty that is enveloping their family. Rose-Anna, pregnant with her eighth child hears that her husband has just lost another job. We learn that every spring Rosa-Anna has to find yet another home for her growing family. Sadly every move takes the family further down into more impoverished living conditions. Through it all, her husband Azarius seems unmoved by the stark reality of the desperation that Rose-Anna sees all around her.
Florentine works as a waitress at the Five and Ten and helps support the family. She falls in love with an ambitious young electrician named Jean Lévesque. Jean, on the other hand, sees Florentine as the embodiment of the poverty he’s been attempting to escape. Rejected by Jean and pregnant with his child, Florentine finds a way out of her imminent destitution in a marriage to a local resident, Emmanuel Letourneau who is heading off to the war in Europe.
Roy’s The Tin Flute presents a stark depiction of life in urban poverty. Although the book deals with many issues of its time, the main theme of the book is the fierceness of impoverishment in the industrialized world. Roy skillfully illustrates the industrial district of Saint-Henri with “intense clarity and vivid description.”1 The book contains phrases which bestow upon the reader a multi-sensual description of the environment in which the story takes place. For example, in illustrating the low-income housing behind the Saint-Henri train station, Roy writes: “[a] crowd of ragged
The Tin Flute. Volume 1. By Gabrielle Roy. Translated by Philip Stratford. Toronto: McClelland and Steward Ltd. 1945. ISBN: 978-0-7710-9388-3. Pp. 400. $21.95
Gabrielle Roy’s 1945 book of fiction titled The Tin Flute follows the lives of the impoverished Lacasse family living in the Saint-Henri district of Montreal during World War II. The novel tells the separate struggles of Rose-Anna and her eldest daughter Florentine Lacasse to survive the poverty that is enveloping their family. Rose-Anna, pregnant with her eighth child hears that her husband has just lost another job. We learn that every spring Rosa-Anna has to find yet another home for her growing family. Sadly every move takes the family further down into more impoverished living conditions. Through it all, her husband Azarius seems unmoved by the stark reality of the desperation that Rose-Anna sees all around her.
Florentine works as a waitress at the Five and Ten and helps support the family. She falls in love with an ambitious young electrician named Jean Lévesque. Jean, on the other hand, sees Florentine as the embodiment of the poverty he’s been attempting to escape. Rejected by Jean and pregnant with his child, Florentine finds a way out of her imminent destitution in a marriage to a local resident, Emmanuel Letourneau who is heading off to the war in Europe.
Roy’s The Tin Flute presents a stark depiction of life in urban poverty. Although the book deals with many issues of its time, the main theme of the book is the fierceness of impoverishment in the industrialized world. Roy skillfully illustrates the industrial district of Saint-Henri with “intense clarity and vivid description.”1 The book contains phrases which bestow upon the reader a multi-sensual description of the environment in which the story takes place. For example, in illustrating the low-income housing behind the Saint-Henri train station, Roy writes: “[a] crowd of ragged