Five obscure Canadian novels

AStranger and Afraid, Marika Robert, McClelland & Stewart (1964) Brian Busby playfully refers to this postwar novel about a Hungarian refugee who develops an affinity for S&M as “a Canadian Fifty Shades.” He’s kidding, and in fact the only novel Robert ever published was one of the finest books Busby discovered during this process. “I found it fascinating that McClelland & Stewart published that because: it dealt with S&M; it was done in the ’60s; it was written by a woman” he said, noting the Fifty Shades reference is tongue-in-cheek. “I just wanted to attract people’s attention to it. It’s a very good book.” The Midnight Queen, Mrs. May Agnes Fleming, Hurst (1870s) Canada’s first bestselling author is now likely its most-forgotten author. It took some patience for Busby to finally turn up a copy of May Agnes Fleming’s seventh novel, a gothic tale set during the Plague with a plot tying together an evil dwarf prince, a yet-to-be-born U.S. president and other “very absurd supernatural elements.” “It was an unexpected treat,” Busby enthused. Orphan Street, Andre Langevin (trans. Alan Brown) McClelland & Stewart (1976) A novel about an impossibly imaginative nine-year-old who is whisked from an orphanage into the apathetic care of relatives, Orphan Street was regarded by Jack McClelland as “the most important novel to come out of French Canada since The Tin Flute,” Busby writes. Busby says it’s among the greatest Canadian novels he’s ever read. “It used to be fairly common to see copies in Montreal but now I never see it around. Little by little it’s disappearing.” Michael’s Crag, Grant Allen, Leadenhall (1893) Busby devotes an entire chapter to the furiously prolific writer whom Busby regards as “easily the finest novelist born in Victoria’s Canada.” Michael’s Crag centres on an elderly English civil servant who believes he’s the archangel Michael after an accident with falling rocks that kills his son and leaves him with a blood clot in his brain. “It’s a fun read” Busby said. “Some of (Allen’s) books are not very good, some are, but most are very entertaining.” Bilingual Today French Tomorrow: Trudeau’s Master Plan and How it Can Be Stopped, J.V. Andrew, BMG (1977) Over on the less impressive side of the literary spectrum lies this alarmist book which forecasts a future where the country becomes progressively (and insidiously) more French. Busby recalls seeing the book on his friends’ family bookshelves as a youngster in Montreal and he says it still retains an unlikely following. “And yet nothing that he predicted has come to pass,” he said.