Elle: A Novel

A few months ago I came across a copy of Douglas Glover's Precious, a novel I had always been meaning to read. I found it an utter delight, a Canadian hard-boiled noir that ranks with the best of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. Thus emboldened, I picked up a copy of Elle, somehow expecting more of the same.

Witness my shock, then, at Elle, which is about as far at odds with Precious' subject matter as you can get. Imagine discovering that Dashiell Hammett also wrote Naval histories; that weird.

And double my shock at this; Elle is very likely a masterpiece, a breathtaking, bold, coarse, witty, sexy, mythic, and scatological take on Canadian history unlike any historical novel I have ever read. Keep in mind I'm not a historical show more fiction type of guy, all told, but still: wow. This may be my favourite historical novel of all time.

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What do you do with a headstrong girl in the 1500s? Elle's father's response was to send her to New France. The ship's captain (her uncle)'s response was to abandon her on an island with her nurse, and her tennis-player lover.

This is a story of survival. After the death of her two companions, Elle finds herself alone and pregnant, with minimal supplies in a harsh, unforgiving climate.

This story is very mystical with many aboriginal myths and beliefs woven into Elle's reality. It is also very earthy and lusty....Elle is a strong woman who remains true to herself and her beliefs. A fascinating, original perspective on survival in the new world.

In the words of the protagonist, Elle is "The story of a girl who went to Canada, gave birth to a fish, turned into a bear, and fell in love with a famous author." The book is based on the true story of the French teenager Marguerite de la Rocque who was abandoned on a deserted Canadian island in 1542 after multiple "indiscretions" with crew members on a ship set sail to colonize Canada. With her latest lover, her maid, ball gowns and a tennis racket, Elle not only survives alone through the Canadian winter but makes it back to France. Douglas Glover creates an intelligent, insightful heroine with tendencies towards both the philosophical and the profane, and the result is an exciting but tender story that is funny, too. The language is show more mesmerizing, the tone is poetic, and I found myself both laughing out loud and "ooh"-ing at the phrases and sentences full of truth and beauty. show less

This poetic tale about a lustful french girl abandoned on the shores of New France as punishment for her indiscretions is a surreal journey through the mythic pre-contact Canada. After losing her lover and nanny on the Isle of Demons (where she has been abandoned), a pregnant Elle survives the winter with the help of a native hunter, and before the thaw walks to the mainland and enters the forest to complete her transformation from woman to she-bear and back again. The language of this story is as haunting as the dark healing magic of the medicine woman who nurses her back to health in the wilds before and during her transformative process. The narrative is not nearly as important as the language and imagery in this lull from real life.

Glowing reviews by people like Wayne Johnson should have warded me off this book- but I liked the quirkiness of it. I pulled it from bookshelf in NFLD- part of the appeal—This book- supposedly a memoir is the historical fictional account of a temptress-- a headstrong French woman- left stranded on a deserted rocky isle with her lover, her nurse. She gives birth to a deformed child- alone after losing both nurse and tennis playing lover – woefully undersupplied and unprepared for the hardships- she encounters a Beothuck man who helps her survive- is taken in by an elderly Indian medicine woman and later returns to France.—a very odd book—but kind of neat.

Excellent novel, actually read this in one sitting as I could not put it down. Douglas Glover's unique writing style is captivating while at times brutally harsh and others remarkably funny.

I enjoyed the first half of the book. The later half, when she started to see things, and when the speculation about 'The General' started, I lost interest. That is when the weird time jumps started, too.