With thanks to Persephone books for the review copy
This will almost certainly be on my books of the year list – a book I couldn’t stop reading but didn’t want to finish. It’s hard to convey in a review just how lovely this book is, you may just need to read it. There is something about Gwethalyn Graham’s story-telling, the way in which she creates relationships, the emotional and upsetting nature of the divisions that she portrays which makes this novel so compelling.
I hadn’t heard of Gwethalyn Graham before Persephone re-issued this novel, a Canadian writer who published one other earlier novel before this. Earth and High Heaven was an enormous success remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for thirty-eight weeks. First published in 1944 – those first readers could not have known whether the happy ending that is implicit in the novel’s opening sentence would be replicated for the allies.
Gwethalyn Graham explores the divisions and deeply entrenched prejudices which existed in Canadian society, through the story of Erica Drake and Marc Reiser who meet and fall in love. Set in Montreal during World War Two – Graham shows us how society was divided into three distinct groups.
“Hampered by racial-religious distinctions to start with, relations between the French, English and Jews of Montreal are still further complicated by the fact that all three groups suffer from an inferiority complex – the French because they are a minority in Canada, the English because they are a minority in Quebec, and the Jews because they are a minority everywhere.”
When they meet, Erica is twenty-eight, a journalist on the society pages of the Montreal Post, Marc is a few years older, waiting for his call up overseas, he is a lawyer, originally from a small town in Ontario. Erica’s father is the President of an import company started by his great grandfather, the Drakes holding a prominent position in the English Canadian society which has so little to do with the French Canadian and Jewish communities who live side by side. Marc’s father had emigrated to Canada from Austria with his wife and Marc’s older brother, he owns a planning mill in Manchester Ontario, while Marc’s brother is a doctor to remote mining communities.
At a cocktail party held in the Drake home, Marc Reiser is brought somewhat unwillingly along by René de Sevigny, a French-Canadian friend, and brother to Erica’s brother’s wife. Marc and Erica meet and are instantly drawn to each other – it’s that love at first sight kind of thing that Disney so love to portray. Erica has led a life of unthinking privilege, so when presented with the everyday prejudices that Marc encounters as a Jewish man in Canadian society, the scales fall from her eyes, and she is horrified. When she tries to introduce Marc to her father; Charles (who spends most of the party hiding in his study) she is appalled when Charles walks straight past him without so much as giving Marc eye contact. How could she have got it so wrong?
Erica is an innocent in the ways of the society in which she lives, she herself is incapable of disliking someone simply because they happen to be Jewish – and so discovering this attitude exists within the very walls of her home she is devastated. However, due to her upbringing, Erica soon recognises that she too is guilty of inherent racism, although in loving Marc and recognising how her attitudes have been shaped by her upbringing she is already more enlightened.
Erica is one of three siblings, her father is known to be rather difficult and set in his ways, but Erica and he have always enjoyed a special understanding. Erica is acknowledged by everyone to be Charles’s favourite – she brings the best out in him. So, when she is brought face to face with her father’s prejudice it is a bitter and devastating blow. Charles had raged and stomped when his son married a French-Canadian woman, but now he is very fond of her, and Charles has become his daughter-in-law’s favourite member of the family. Erica tells herself that he will come around, if only he would meet Marc – and see what he is really like. Charles can be cruel – taking every opportunity he can to tell anti-Semitic stories – calling Marc a ‘cheap Jewish lawyer.’
‘I don’t want my daughter to go through life neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, living in a kind of no man’s land where half the people you know will never accept him, and half the people he knows will never accept you. I don’t want a son-in-law who’ll be an embarrassment to our friends, a son-in-law who can’t be put up at my club and who can’t go with us to places where we’ve gone all our lives. I don’t want a son-in-law whom I’ll have to apologize for, and explain, and have to hear insulted indirectly unless I can remember to warn people off first.’
Erica’s younger sister Miriam comes home from England, although only twenty-four she has a failed marriage behind her, and two other men vying for her attentions. Miriam takes Erica’s side, she meets Marc and likes him immediately. Miriam understands the problems with their parents in a way that Erica seems unable to. She loves her sister, the one sibling never to cause their parents a moments concern, but now sees there may be no way back for them all. Erica continues to see Marc against her parent’s wishes, Marc tries to make Erica aware of the difficulties they will face, tries to get her to see that marriage between them is impossible. Erica is worn down by the pressure and stress, the barrage of Charles’s vitriol against the man she loves. She loses weight, is visibly changed, but hangs on grimly nevertheless, her belief in Marc, and the possibility of a future together is unwavering.
This is a surprisingly emotional read, and I defy anyone not to rush through it – desperate to see if the happy ending implied in that first sentence comes true. Erica is the driving force of the novel, a wonderfully sympathetic character through whose eyes we see the divisions within a society.
Wow, high praise indeed! This must be pretty special if it’s set to make your end-of-year list. Not an author I’m familiar with, but she does sound excellent. Thanks for the introduction.
Without Persephone I wouldn’t have heard of her or this book either.
Sounds very apt for our times, it’s gone on my list.
Ooh good. My work is done 😊
This sounds excellent , Ali. I know very little about Canadian fiction other than contemporary novels. Well done Persephone for publishing it.
I never, think I read much Canadian lit either however having recently re-read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale I then read this, and am currently reading The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence.
A hat-trick!
Yes except I read two other books between this and the one I’m reading now. 😊
Sounds very interesting indeed, I knew about the French-speaking / English-speaking divisions but not the others.
Yes I had no idea either. Presumably those divisions are now entirely historical.
Sounds remarkably interesting. Hasn’t the author got a lovely face, too – looks like she has interesting things to say
Yes I thought the same about the author photo, such a lovely picture.
This has been on my TBR for ages because she’s well known as a classic Canlit author who pushed the boundaries of her time, who also received the Governor General’s Award for this novel, but my copy is a long way from Persephone-prettiness. Perhaps if it had nicer end-papers, I’d’ve read it by now. Am so glad to read your thoughts on it and to know how much you’ve enjoyed it too! The other Canadian woman on Persephone’s list (a real favourite of mine) is Ethel Wilson: Swamp Angel is wickedly good but I do understand why they chose Hetty Dorval too.
I haven’t read Hetty Dorval I don’t know why I have overlooked it.
I definitely recommend you pick this one up though – in a way the edition shouldn’t matter – though you know I am a sucker for pretty books.
HD could be read in an afternoon with a pot of tea for sure. I still remember bits of it, so although it’s not my favourite of EW’s, it’s very good. And, yes, I will definitely read GG: I’ll take a snap of my copy and share it with you sometime. It’s not especially pretty, but I have a soft spot for the imprint I have collected it in, so that pleases me!
Ooh lovely, yes please do.
This does really sound like a lovely book. And I like the author’s first name as well… I wonder whether I am pronouncing it correctly in my head, since I have never heard it before.
It’s a name I hadn’t heard before either – I would have thought there was only one way to pronounce it so you probably are saying it correctly. It’s a rather lovely name.
Sounds glorious Ali, and yet another author new to me! And very relevant, of course.
Oh yes very relevant – Persephone introduce us to so many new names.
What a wonderful addition to the Persephone list. I have a copy tucked away – bought after the warmest of recommendations from Claire @ The Captive Reader – and it really is time I picked it up and started reading.
I really think you would love it too.
[…] Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham was an enormous surprise to me. Sent to me as a review copy by Persephone books, […]
[…] – as they were then. Already I feel if I were to edit it, I might have to change it to include Earth and High Heaven – one of my best books of […]
[…] Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham re-issued by Persephone books is a wonderfully poignant love story. Gwethalyn Graham explores the divisions and deeply entrenched prejudices which existed in Canadian society, through the story of Erica Drake and Marc Reiser who meet and fall in love. Set in Montreal during World War Two – Graham shows us its very divided society. […]