Reviewed by Eileen Mary Holowka
Colette Maitland’s novel Riel Street is broken into twelve chapters, each one its own short story. Unlike Maitland’s recent short story collection Keeping the Peace (Biblioasis), Riel Street focuses on one set of characters, a family named the Bouchards, and their life on an army base in Kingston, Ontario.
Based somewhat on Maitland’s own experiences as a child, Riel Street offers an unprejudiced, realistic glimpse into a small sample of Canadian life between the years of 1967 to 1970. The resultant novel is precise but not simple, subtle but not lacking in heartache. Whereas Keeping the Piece directly deals with trauma, broken relationships, and the inevitable tragedies of life, Riel Street skirts around the edges of these wounds.
Maitland brings out the drama of the everyday and the emotional immensity of even the smallest moments of life. Through her depiction of just one community, one street, she grasps at (and grabs hold of) the more intangible sorrows of the world.
Riel Street simultaneously addresses and evades the larger political incidents of the time period, such as the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and the murder of Pierre LaPorte. These real world events are often filtered through the perspectives of the Bouchard children. For example, the Canadian centennial year of 1967 reminds the kids of the trip they couldn’t take because of their finances, while the TV coverage of Kennedy’s assassination and Vietnam prevent the children from watching The Lone Ranger.
Although these diversions may seem to slightly dampen the urgency of the moments, they are more realistically portrayed because of it. The Bouchards have more pressing concerns at hand than distant political affairs. Living in a household of two parents and four children in a closely-knit community provides drama enough, and these troubles are much closer to home.
The stories flip quickly through the family’s varied perspectives and opinions: from Gil Bouchard, the quick-tempered military father; to Shirley Bouchard, the frustrated, over-worked mother; to Claire, their second of four, lovely, disobedient, and wonderfully portrayed children. Maitland includes the extended family as well, from loving grandmas to untameable uncles, each new character just as marvelously flawed as the last.
But what Maitland does best is avoid sentimentalism. Everyone in the neighbourhood is chock full of flaws and they are all more than happy to point them out to each other. The Bouchards are a hard family to warm up to: the kids can be brats, the parents can be careless, and normally someone is yelling at someone else. So while nothing in Riel Street is romanticized, everything is meaningful. No matter how small, each moment bears an enormous weight, right up until the climax: the emptying of an ashtray, a moment of powerlessness.
But, while Riel Street is great at portraying women’s struggles, what it lacks is a strong male voice. Although the perspectives of the young Bouchard boys, Stevie and John, are touched upon, their stories lose strength in comparison to their sister Claire’s, whose narrative journey takes her from young and naïve to a faint echoing resemblance of her mother. While there are other male characters, such as Gil, Uncle Frank, and Uncle Guy, they receive less time under the spotlight than the woman and are continuously portrayed as useless and insensitive.
There are a few moments in which Maitland begins to dig ever so slightly into the mind of Gil, but she never goes quite far enough. Many of the most powerful scenes in the novel are the ones in which Gil seems to express remorse, or sadness, or any feeling beyond the appreciation of sports. While his apparent emotional detachment appears to be an intentional commentary on his character, some moments of introspection would have helped to humanize him. Whereas Shirley’s sharp temper is redeemed by her struggle for feminist individualism, Gil’s demeanor is half-explained only through vague, off-hand references to his experiences in the Congo. Sometimes it seems as though Maitland is not explaining as much as she should be, that she is leaving too many ideas unsaid.
Following in the footsteps of some of Canada’s finest short story writers, such as Alice Munro or Mavis Gallant, Maitland does sometimes say more through what is left out, or barely touched on, than through what is explicitly there. She focuses on the everyday with sharp, emotional intensity by concentrating on the subtext. Whether she is conveying the disappointment over not getting a red sucker or the desperate angst over a mysterious note from a teacher, there is always something deeper running between the lines. While this device increases the intrigue, it sometimes leaves the narrative a little bland, or vague.
Other times it works quite flawlessly. When something truly awful happens in the community, it usually happens off-stage, or away from home, and is relayed back to the reader through the mother’s distracted representation or the childrens’ half understanding of it. For example, when Claire’s grandmother tells her about the recent rape of a girl her age, she tries to ask “what does rape mean?” but only manages to say “I’m hungry,” unable to even fully process the news. Her and her diabetic grandmother’s following gluttonous consumption of ice cream, and the indigestion that follow suite, speak loudly enough of Claire’s emotional turmoil and subtle coming of age without anything more needing to be said:
Guilt seeps in after her mother’s departure […] Her stomach becomes a gastric ship, dodging waves of vanilla ice cream. She reaches the toilet as it capsizes—a family of white curds, foam, bread and cheese. Claire flushes, then wipes her face on a towel, avoiding the liar in the mirror. The ice cream is gone, but the secret still churns inside her belly, straddling her chest as she lays her head down on one of Grandma Ettie’s prickly feather pillows.
It is debatable whether the Bouchards are even the true protagonists of the story or if, instead, the neighbourhood Bliss family (whose stories are told in the off-beats) are what the narrative is really centered around. The seemingly endless drama and turmoil of the family is told through the Bouchard’s gossip amongst their neighbours. The residents of Riel Street thrive on each other’s drama, as addicted to the community gossip as they are to their soaps.
One of the loveliest moments of Riel Street is when people from all over a campground gather around one television to watch the latest episode of the popular soap opera Shady Ridge. The moment hints at two of the most important themes in the novel: community and gossip. The life on Riel Street is not that different from Shady Ridge. Albeit more realistic, Riel Street has its soap opera moments as well. Gossip brings the neighbours together, to the pregnant teenager’s baby shower and the paralyzed boy’s party.
Riel Street speaks to the soothing nature of gossip, of storytelling, like Claire drifting off to sleep listening to the “talking, talking, voices like spades, digging, smoothing, sifting the family dirt.” Just as the community comes together over gossip, Maitland’s stories come together within her novel, and her readers come together by picking up the book, digging through its pages, and voicing their opinions—by starting to gossip.
Frontenac | 199 pages | $18.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1927823170
‘Riel Street’ by Colette Maitland
Book Reviews
Colette Maitland’s novel Riel Street is broken into twelve chapters, each one its own short story. Unlike Maitland’s recent short story collection Keeping the Peace (Biblioasis), Riel Street focuses on one set of characters, a family named the Bouchards, and their life on an army base in Kingston, Ontario.
Based somewhat on Maitland’s own experiences as a child, Riel Street offers an unprejudiced, realistic glimpse into a small sample of Canadian life between the years of 1967 to 1970. The resultant novel is precise but not simple, subtle but not lacking in heartache. Whereas Keeping the Piece directly deals with trauma, broken relationships, and the inevitable tragedies of life, Riel Street skirts around the edges of these wounds.
Maitland brings out the drama of the everyday and the emotional immensity of even the smallest moments of life. Through her depiction of just one community, one street, she grasps at (and grabs hold of) the more intangible sorrows of the world.
Riel Street simultaneously addresses and evades the larger political incidents of the time period, such as the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and the murder of Pierre LaPorte. These real world events are often filtered through the perspectives of the Bouchard children. For example, the Canadian centennial year of 1967 reminds the kids of the trip they couldn’t take because of their finances, while the TV coverage of Kennedy’s assassination and Vietnam prevent the children from watching The Lone Ranger.
Although these diversions may seem to slightly dampen the urgency of the moments, they are more realistically portrayed because of it. The Bouchards have more pressing concerns at hand than distant political affairs. Living in a household of two parents and four children in a closely-knit community provides drama enough, and these troubles are much closer to home.
The stories flip quickly through the family’s varied perspectives and opinions: from Gil Bouchard, the quick-tempered military father; to Shirley Bouchard, the frustrated, over-worked mother; to Claire, their second of four, lovely, disobedient, and wonderfully portrayed children. Maitland includes the extended family as well, from loving grandmas to untameable uncles, each new character just as marvelously flawed as the last.
But what Maitland does best is avoid sentimentalism. Everyone in the neighbourhood is chock full of flaws and they are all more than happy to point them out to each other. The Bouchards are a hard family to warm up to: the kids can be brats, the parents can be careless, and normally someone is yelling at someone else. So while nothing in Riel Street is romanticized, everything is meaningful. No matter how small, each moment bears an enormous weight, right up until the climax: the emptying of an ashtray, a moment of powerlessness.
But, while Riel Street is great at portraying women’s struggles, what it lacks is a strong male voice. Although the perspectives of the young Bouchard boys, Stevie and John, are touched upon, their stories lose strength in comparison to their sister Claire’s, whose narrative journey takes her from young and naïve to a faint echoing resemblance of her mother. While there are other male characters, such as Gil, Uncle Frank, and Uncle Guy, they receive less time under the spotlight than the woman and are continuously portrayed as useless and insensitive.
There are a few moments in which Maitland begins to dig ever so slightly into the mind of Gil, but she never goes quite far enough. Many of the most powerful scenes in the novel are the ones in which Gil seems to express remorse, or sadness, or any feeling beyond the appreciation of sports. While his apparent emotional detachment appears to be an intentional commentary on his character, some moments of introspection would have helped to humanize him. Whereas Shirley’s sharp temper is redeemed by her struggle for feminist individualism, Gil’s demeanor is half-explained only through vague, off-hand references to his experiences in the Congo. Sometimes it seems as though Maitland is not explaining as much as she should be, that she is leaving too many ideas unsaid.
Following in the footsteps of some of Canada’s finest short story writers, such as Alice Munro or Mavis Gallant, Maitland does sometimes say more through what is left out, or barely touched on, than through what is explicitly there. She focuses on the everyday with sharp, emotional intensity by concentrating on the subtext. Whether she is conveying the disappointment over not getting a red sucker or the desperate angst over a mysterious note from a teacher, there is always something deeper running between the lines. While this device increases the intrigue, it sometimes leaves the narrative a little bland, or vague.
Other times it works quite flawlessly. When something truly awful happens in the community, it usually happens off-stage, or away from home, and is relayed back to the reader through the mother’s distracted representation or the childrens’ half understanding of it. For example, when Claire’s grandmother tells her about the recent rape of a girl her age, she tries to ask “what does rape mean?” but only manages to say “I’m hungry,” unable to even fully process the news. Her and her diabetic grandmother’s following gluttonous consumption of ice cream, and the indigestion that follow suite, speak loudly enough of Claire’s emotional turmoil and subtle coming of age without anything more needing to be said:
Guilt seeps in after her mother’s departure […] Her stomach becomes a gastric ship, dodging waves of vanilla ice cream. She reaches the toilet as it capsizes—a family of white curds, foam, bread and cheese. Claire flushes, then wipes her face on a towel, avoiding the liar in the mirror. The ice cream is gone, but the secret still churns inside her belly, straddling her chest as she lays her head down on one of Grandma Ettie’s prickly feather pillows.
It is debatable whether the Bouchards are even the true protagonists of the story or if, instead, the neighbourhood Bliss family (whose stories are told in the off-beats) are what the narrative is really centered around. The seemingly endless drama and turmoil of the family is told through the Bouchard’s gossip amongst their neighbours. The residents of Riel Street thrive on each other’s drama, as addicted to the community gossip as they are to their soaps.
One of the loveliest moments of Riel Street is when people from all over a campground gather around one television to watch the latest episode of the popular soap opera Shady Ridge. The moment hints at two of the most important themes in the novel: community and gossip. The life on Riel Street is not that different from Shady Ridge. Albeit more realistic, Riel Street has its soap opera moments as well. Gossip brings the neighbours together, to the pregnant teenager’s baby shower and the paralyzed boy’s party.
Riel Street speaks to the soothing nature of gossip, of storytelling, like Claire drifting off to sleep listening to the “talking, talking, voices like spades, digging, smoothing, sifting the family dirt.” Just as the community comes together over gossip, Maitland’s stories come together within her novel, and her readers come together by picking up the book, digging through its pages, and voicing their opinions—by starting to gossip.
Frontenac | 199 pages | $18.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1927823170