Customer Reviews

The Tin Flute (New Canadian Library)

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Shortly after it was published, The Tin Flute surprised Canadian readers and was soon widely read and enjoyed internationally. Its author, Gabrielle Roy, reached out to an audience with eloquent, flowing prose, by describing the very depth of the human condition through the Lacasse family.

Briefly: the main character of the novel is the oldest Lacasse child, Florentine. Her poor family, residing in the slums of Saint Henri, Montreal, rely heavily on the wages she brings in as a waitress. Rose-Anna, her mother, struggles to care for her growing family and struggle through tragedy, while the father, Azarius, is unable to maintain a job. Florentine's life is turned upside down when she meets a handsome man named Jean, an affair that is doomed from the beginning. A crushed Florentine turns to Jean's friend, Emmanuel, for his love, although she cannot return it, as she is still torn over her feelings for Jean. In the original French, it was entitled, "Bonheure d'occasion" which cannot be perfectly translated. However, the English title of "The Tin Flute" is very suitable and expresses the message of the novel from the smallest Lacasse child, Daniel -- his only great desire was to have a shiny tin flute, a symbol of all that he would never be able to call his own, in a poverty-stricken existence.

With this groundwork, Roy paints a convincing and enthralling portrait of an impoverished family, troubled love, and mixed ideals in the midst of World War II. It is a novel well worth reading and will leave you with new insight into the human condition and the brutality of poverty. Although some phrases are lost in the translation to English from the original French, the translation is highly successful in being as nearly as effective as the original.

For related themes (although from very different perspectives & times) you may also wish to explore Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

If only more books were written like this! The Tin Flute is the poignant story of a young girl growing up in poverty in the slums of Montreal. It is the 1940's, war is brooding. And we are introduced to a French Canadian family faced with unemployment, too many children, and despair. We suffer as the mother, pregnant again, searches on foot for affordable housing. Her daughter works at the five-and-dime and is inlove with a man who holds contempt for her class and social background.
I have read this story three times. It is without a doubt, one the greatest books ever written of its genre. If you enjoyed "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" or "Angela's Ashes" you will no doubt love this story equally well. It is unforgettable.

I read this book in a university class on Quebec literature. I was touched by the compassionate, warm portraits drawn by Roy in this sad, haunting story. Like Shakespeare, she is a mastermind at painting the tragedy of life -- the inevetiablity of loss and pain. Reading this book is akin to watching a painfully beautiful sunset -- you know it will end in darkness but you feel compelled to keep watching in fascination.

I was delighted to find that the grade 10 class also loved the book when I decided to read my excerpts for our social studies section on WW II.

It's really too bad that Canadian authors aren't publicized more in the U.S. I bought this book from amazon-canada because I wouldnt have known what to look for. It's won several literary prizes in Canada and is well deserving of them. The story of a French-Canadian family during the depression and early years of WWII in Montreal, it portrays a world that no longer exists. In this country, the people would have been Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation. The differences between then and now were phenomenal. Men joined the Army to put food on the table. They looked everywhere for honest work, even part time or temporary or low-paying. They didn't join gangs or deal drugs. People weren't afraid of each other, even in the worst neighborhoods. Yet their lives were unbelievably hard. There was high infant mortality. A child with leukemia was doomed. Landlords put whole families out in the street when they got behind with the rent, often due to unemployment. The war ended the depression, but some of the characters ask themselves if it's worth the price, or if peace as they knew it was any better. The author wrote this book at the time it took place, in a city she knew. It could have easily been set in Detroit or Chicago, London or Dublin. There is a universal quality to this story, that gives a vivid picture of the times. The book isn't cheerful, but it's also not hopeless. At the end you don't know what will happen to these people, but they have a chance. A really moving story.

Roy pronounced "Wa" in her native French, wrote her story about the Lacasse family, in the late 1940's. She writes with frankness and understanding of her characters' all too human vices and frailties, that I think that having read this book has made me a better person. My favorite Book!

I am consistently impressed with the fiction (mostly) contained in the New Canadian Library series, published by McLelland & Stewart. Gabriele Roy's 1945 novel The Tin Flute is certainly no exception. A story of late depression-era Montreal, Tin Flute is almost a laboratory-like setting of individuals beset by grinding poverty, and how they respond. Very much a novel of characters, Roy continually asks the reader whether, as the novel's eventual hero, Emmanuel, muses after volunteering for the army after Hitler's invasion of Poland, "a guy can help himself sometimes by helping other people," or whether the immediate retort of his comrade, "a guy has his work cut out these days looking after himself", is more true. Florentine, the desperately poor waitress who forms the center of Roy's plot, longs for (and eventually becomes impregnated by) the rake Jean, while Emmanuel more chastely pines for her. Roy gives the perfect one-sentence description of Jean: "He could be kind if his kindness caused him no problems." Florentine muses about herself (and I believe Roy asks the reader): "Sweetness brought you nowhere. That's what had ruined them all." Roy's ending to the novel is wonderfully ambiguous, and leaves open the questions of goodness, opportunism, and purpose she raises throughout.

I purchased this novel for the purpose of completing my B.A. Degree. This book was required in a course for french canadian literture. I have read it in both in english and french. The works of Gabrielle Roy has won three Orders of Canada prior to her death. This book was also considered for the Noble Prize in Lit. on several occasions. It is a powerful novel of the multiple forces that work against people of poor socio-economic status. It descrbes, in detail, the lives of a poor working class family in the industrialized St. Henri district of Montreal at the onset of WWII. Although the characters are fictional, the situation and circumstances of their lives are quite real. The novel has been defined as an example of the realist genre and personifies the era very well. The most interesting aspect of the novel is not the obvious elements of poverty like crime, lack of education and illness but the mental and emotional suffering of its victims. One may judge the actions of the characters harsely but this would be unfair. One must appreciate their situation and thereby feel compassion for them. It is a good story.

This book was part of the Grade 12 curriclum at my high school in Timmins, Ontario, Canada. It was a well written book, giving up detail and insight into what life was like for a struggling family in the 1940's. My favorite character had to be Florentine. She was the most vivid and had the most compasion for others. If you ever want to read a book that has an interresting plot and great characters, then this is the book for you.

This book is very realistic in the way it portrays the poor and the anxiety and sadness that they go through just to survive. The life of the mother really touched me, she really had to sacrifice her own life for the survival of her family. The book really shows just how much being poor and uneducated can isolate a person and really limit their choices in life.

Tougher than the title ... strong characterizations and an out of the mainstream geography of drama ... this book was recommended by a very smart and well-read woman ... and proved itself worth the cost and effort. Recommended reading.