Plainsong

Peter Roberts is a former Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union and
author of George Costakis: A Russian Life in Art.

Many writers have tried to evoke that magnificent piece of Canada that
is southwestern Alberta. Nancy Huston has done it best. Besides vividly
re-creating the landscape, she takes us through four generations of a
family and in so doing provides a social and psychological history of
the past 100 years in the region that is both authentic and immensely
moving.

There is a savage denunciation of the church and of Christianity in
general, especially as it concerns Native peoples such as the Blackfoot
of southern Alberta. Nowadays this is familiar terrain; if there is a
criticism to be made, it could be that Huston’s passion on this
subject pushes her a little out of artistic equilibrium. But it is a
criticism hard to sustain as she coaxes us lovingly back into the
tangled affairs of the Sterling family.

Huston uses a daring literary device throughout the novel. The
narrator, who is the hero’s granddaughter, speaks to him throughout in
the second person. It is as though the entire novel is a monologue
addressed to the narrator’s dead and beloved grandfather. It is an
unusual technique but one that, surprisingly, works.

Regrettably, this superb book became the centre of a literary tempest
in Quebec. When she had finished writing the book in English, Huston
(who lives in Paris) wrote it again in French, her usual language of
publication. The French version won the Governor General’s Award for
French fiction. Quebec writers and publishers argued that the book in
French was a translation, not an original work. To its credit, the
Canada Council stood by its decision.