Heather O’Neill takes us on a literary tour of the Québécois city – from Mordechai Richler’s sandwich shop to the superior streets of Leonard Cohen’s early novels
- Which are your favourite books about Montreal? Let us know in the comments
My dad and I used to eat hotdogs on Saturdays at the Montreal Pool Room on St Laurent Boulevard in the red light district. There was a map of Montreal on the wall. There was a teenage prostitute in a sailor hat at a table reading comics and drinking cola. As I sat on the stool with my legs dangling over the side, my dad would tell me stories from people he knew from the neighbourhood. It was natural that my novels, Lullabies for Little Criminals and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, would take place in this neighbourhood, with those characters. So many other writers have used Montreal as a backdrop. Here are some that spring to my mind.
I read Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute in high school. It takes place in the down and out St Henri neighbourhood in 1940. We are in the world of peeling wallpaper and unstuck kitchen tiles and jackets that refuse to do anything about the wind. Florentine is a skinny beautiful waitress at a five and dime, experiencing a brief and ultimately tragic bloom. Its depiction of the lives of the lower class in Montreal was said to have laid the groundwork for The Quiet Revolution in Quebec.
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