When in Canada

It was a gently uplifting start to Blue Metropolis. Eschewing the more glamorous Opening Cocktail, I went instead for readings by Canadian authors Genni Gunn and Catherine McKenzie at the event Reading Canada: Fiction in English from Coast to Coast.

Genni Gunn, an Italian-Canadian writer with a vivacious manner, read from her latest novel, Solitaria. She provided a lively account of how she came to write the book. The germ of the idea came to her while on holiday in Italy, spending time with her old aunt who felt abandoned by the family. Gunn was a witness not only to her aunt’s story, but also those of other relatives, receiving many perspectives on the same events and characters; exactly the kind of raw material that a writer longs for.

From this emerged the character of Piera, a very generous person who is, however, “always a little bit more right than you are.” Reading the first chapter of Solitaria, the audience was immediately plunged into Piera’s small, closed world.

The issue of truth and fiction, real and made-up characters, surfaced again when Montreal author and lawyer, Catherine McKenzie, read from her bestselling second novel, Arranged. She began by saying that she keenly observed social customs and liked to take them a few steps further in her novels.

One such custom is arranged marriage. She finds it fascinating that some modern, educated, East Asian women would voluntarily accept what was an alien idea to a Westerner. But McKenzie’s heroine, deceived by two lovers in a row, goes for it.

McKenzie explains that she got rid of the autobiographical impulse by writing a manuscript based on her own life and then putting it away. Then she went on to write her official first novel, Spin, another bestseller, followed by Arranged. Even so, “People assume that you are the protagonist, at least of your first novel,” she says.

The title of the event, Reading Canada: Fiction in English from Coast to Coast, remained an enigma for me. Both writers admitted to no real fictional grounding in Canada. I don’t have a problem with Canadian writers situating their novels wherever, including outer space. My guess is that the organisers picked a catchy title but could not make the content fit, nor did they get around to changing the title.

I was far more put off by the quality of the moderating by Canadian author, Joel Yanofsky. He hardly made any eye contact with the audience, instead read disinterestedly off a script. He attempted a funny personal quip in the midst of announcing that there was an empty seat beside the writers present at the request of PEN Canada, to remind us of authors behind bars in parts of the world. When it was time to open up the reading to discussion, he monopolised the first few questions. Not the quality moderating normally expected at the Blue Met.

Veena Gokhale is a Montreal-based communications consultant. She has published a variety of non fiction and fiction.

The 13th annual Blue Met Festival Metropolis Bleu continues through May 1, 2011, at the Holiday Inn Select centre-ville (in Chinatown). For more information visit www.metropolisbleu.org