In Translation: The Gabrielle Roy-Joyce Marshall Correspondence

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

The art of literary translation, say critics, is almost as demanding of
the imagination as writing the original itself. That is certainly one of
the truths supported by the 200 letters passed between one of Canada’s
foremost fiction writers, Gabrielle Roy, and the translator of some of
her novels into English, Joyce Marshall. But, much more than that, these
letters, written between 1958 and 1980, also portray an intimate
friendship between two fascinating personalities with very lively minds
(Marshall herself was also a published novelist). And though many of
them deal with the tedious details of the tasks at hand, some of them
are refreshingly revealing of the literary craft, the styles of the
writers, the pleasures of exploring the nuances of both languages and
the personal details of their lives.

This is not, as the blurb suggests, a “critical” examination of the
correspondence, but simply a collection with a lucid and informative
introduction, a copious set of notes and a valuable set of appendixes.
For those who have read Roy’s novels, either in the original French or
in translation, this book will, as Roy’s autobiography has already
done, provide pleasant and profitable enhancement of that experience.