Québec's Quiet Revolution (La Révolution tranquille) was still a good dozen years in the future when Gabrielle Roy wrote The Tin Flute. It was a massive social movement which threw off the yoke of the Catholic Church, and the economic, cultural, and political dominance of the anglophone minority establishment. Many of the francophones who led and who supported the movement would have come from homes where that was the way things were; often accepted without question.

World War II began to change the status quo. This is where Roy's novel begins. Set in Saint Henri, among the tanneries, factories, and railways of one of Montréal's worst slums, it tells the story of the LaCasse family, a not untypical family for the time. Florentine, the eldest child at nineteen, worked at a lunch counter at a five and dime store. She was determined she would never lead the life her mother had. Rose-Anna, her mother, was pregnant with her twelfth child. Azarius, her father, was about to be fired from his current job as a taxi driver. Although full of ideas and schemes, he was never able to get anything off the ground, pulling his family further and further into poverty.

May 1, the traditional moving day in Montréal was approaching quickly , and cheaper accommodation had to be found for the family. Each year's move was to smaller and dingier quarters despite the increase in family size. Although Rose-Anna subscribed to the idea that her children should go to school, it was not always possible. While the older ones had completed an expected number of grades, the younger ones often couldn't attend school due to illness, or lack of basics such as waterproof shoes in which to get there.

The war had brought new demands for labour, new opportunities, but also new demands for housing and higher prices. The family was surviving on Florentine's wages, so her brother made the decision to enlist for the monthly stipend it would bring. The war was a matter of contention in their community, however. Presented by the authorities as a war for the King and the British Empire, it had little relevance for a population which still identified with France, even almost two hundred years after the conquest. The fallout from the Conscription Crisis of 1917 still lingered in people's minds, and they were not eager to help out.

Some, however, saw opportunity on the domestic front in the war. Such a one was Jean Lévesque. Florentine naively envisioned herself in love with Jean, who saw her as just another conquest, while at the same time being inexplicably drawn to her.

He knew now that Florentine's house reminded him of the thing he most dreaded: poverty, that implacable smell of poor clothing, the poverty you could recognize with your eyes shut. He realized that Florentine personified this kind of wretched life against which his whole being was in revolt. And in the same moment he understood the feeling that drew him toward her: she was his own poverty, his solitude, his sad childhood, his lonely youth. She was all that he had hated, all that he had left behind him, but also everything that remained intimately linked to him, the most profound part of his nature and the powerful spur of his destiny.

He had to reject her. Emmanuel Létourneau, his old friend, did fall in love with Florentine, who in turn spurned him until she needed him.

This is a surprising book for the time in its frankness. A first novel, it became a classic in French speaking Canada, and on translation into English, a pan Canadian classic. It is now a Penguin Modern Classic. Roy won the Governor - General's Award with it, but as an indication of just one thing wrong with the two solitudes, she did not win it until it had been translated into English. At the time of its publication there was no award for fiction in French. She won again in translation in 1957. An award for French fiction was first given out in 1959, and she won again, in French in 1977. She has also won France's Prix Femina, and Québec's Prix David.

A marvellous book. The realistic story, which deals with the struggles of a poor family in Montreal during the Second World War, is strong and compelling. The characters are interesting, too, and the author’s description of their inner lives, their hopes and fears, is sublime. Her sophisticated use of vivid detail really made me feel like I was living in the Montreal of the 1940s. This is a classic novel that should be taught in Canadian schools. ( )

Gabrielle Roy was born in St. Boniface and worked for a number of years as a teacher in Manitoba. Despite this she does not appear on the list Wikipedia publishes of Writers from Manitoba but she does appear on the Quebec list. That may be because of this book which is set in the St. Henri district of Montreal in the early days of the Second World War. It is probably the one which is her most famous but, to my mind, some of her other books like Where Nests the Waterhen and her collection of short stories in the books Garden in the Wind and Enchanted Summer are superior. That isn't to say that this is a bad book; in fact, it is terrific. It just has a few clunky bits that the more experienced writer would have smoothed out.

St. Henri was a poor area of Montreal and it was hard hit by the Depression of the 1930s. Many men could not find a job through no fault of their own. Florentine Lacasse's father, Azarius, was unemployed for years. The Lacasse family even went on relief. So, Florentine got a job as a waitress at the diner in the Five and Dime and gave virtually all her earnings to her mother. She is not a beauty and she is too thin but nevertheless she catches the eye of Jean Levesque, a regular at the diner. He asks her to meet him at the movies that night but then he stands her up. Florentine becomes enamoured with Jean despite this treatment.

Meanwhile, at home, Rose-Anna Lacasse is trying to make ends meet for her family. There are at least five children younger than Florentine and Rose-Anna is soon going to deliver another child. Azarius has a job driving taxi but he soon loses it. The family is being evicted from their apartment so Rose-Anna trudges the streets of St. Henri looking for a new home. Rose-Anna is the true heroine of this story because she somehow keeps feeding her children. Florentine's salary is about the only thing she can count on but Florentine has other worries.

The men in the story find salvation by joining the army. The money the government will send home to their families will provide valuable support while the men are away. No-one seems to consider that they could pay for that with their life. It would have been interesting if Roy had written a sequel that showed how everyone fared after the war was over.

This book shows life at its most basic; if food can be put on the table and there is a roof overhead, then one can decide if the children have good enough clothes to go to school or if they should be kept home. Obviously, education was a luxury that sometimes could not be afforded. ( )

the parts from female perspective were excellent. the male perspectives were less interesting. ( )

This is the kind of book that should be "studied" to get the most out of it, I think. I read it for pleasure, but it's more of a social commentary cloaked as a novel. And I'm sure it has some very insightful comments, but I (apologetically) did not pay close enough attention to anything outside of the plot. Its commentary is about war and survival and urban Montreal life at the beginning of World War II. I can say I've read it, but I can't say I 'got it.' ( )