Hugh MacLennan

A landmark of nationalist fiction, Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes is the story of two peoples within one nation, each with its own legend and ideas of what a nation should be. In his vivid portrayals of human drama in First World War era Quebec, MacLennan focuses on two individuals whose love increases the prejudices that surround them until they discover that l#x1A;ove consists in this, that two solitudes protect, and touch and greet each other. The novel centres around Paul Tallard and his struggles in reconciling the differences between the English identity of his love Heather Methuen and her family, and the French identity of his father. Against this backdrop, the chasm between French and English communities grows deeper. Published in 1945, the novel popularized the use of t#x1A;wo solitudes as referring to a perceived lack of communication between English and Frenchspeaking Canadians.

Two Solitudes

Penelope Wain believes that her lover, Neil Macrae, has been killed while serving overseas under her father. That he died apparently in disgrace does not alter her love for him, even though her father is insistent on his guilt. What neither Penelope or her father knows is that Neil is not dead, but has returned to Halifax to clear his name. Hugh MacLennan’s first novel is a compelling romance set against the horrors of wartime and the catastrophic Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917.

Barometer Rising

In his vivid portrayals of human drama in prewar Quebec, Hugh MacLennan focuses on two individuals whose love increases the prejudices that surround them until they discover that "love consists in this, that two solitudes protect, and touch and greet each other."

Two solitudes

George and Catherine Stewart share not only the burden of Catherine's heart disease, which could cause her death at any time, but the memory of Jerome Martell, her first husband and George's closest friend. Martel, a brilliant doctor passionately concerned with social justice, is presumed to have died in a Nazi prison camp. His sudden return to Montreal precipitates the central crisis of the novel. Hugh MacLennan takes the reader into the lives of his three characters and back into the world of Montreal in the thirties, when politics could send an idealist across the world to Spain, France, Auschwitz, Russia, and China before his return home.

Watch that Ends the Night

In the 1980s the Bureaucracy eliminated all knowledge of the past in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. In 2030 Andr?ervais discovers two metal boxes containing manuscripts, diaries, and other personal papers that have somehow survived and asks an old man, John Wellfleet, to use these documents to discover the past. In doing so, Wellfleet learns the truth about two relatives: his older cousin Timothy Wellfleet, a Montreal TV journalist at the time of the 1970 War Measures Act, and his stepfather, Conrad Dehmel, a German scholar struggling to keep his Jewish fianc?and himself safe from Hitler's Gestapo. Hugh MacLennan skillfully juxtaposes the insanity of life in Nazi Germany, the political climate of Montreal in the 1960s, and the perspective of an old man looking back on the conditions that led to world destruction as the background to an unforgettable love story.

Voices in Time

Marian Engel

A student at McGill in the mid-1950s, Marian Engel wrote her M.A. thesis under the direction of Hugh MacLennan. Their work together became the basis of a correspondence, the MacLennan half of which survives and is detailed here. Both personal and professional in nature, MacLennan's letters to Engel provide fascinating insights into his life's pursuit of writing and offer another glimpse of the author of Two Solitudes.

The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence

Dear Marian, Dear Hugh

Jerome Martell abadoned his wife Catherine and their daughter Sally to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. After he was presumed dead, Catherine married her childhood friend George. Twelve years later, Jerome returned to Montreal and turned Catherine's life upside down.

The Watch That Ends the Night

Story of an international marriage between a shy Canadian and an American engineer.

The Precipice

The Precipice is the sweeping story of Lucy Cameron, a young woman who seems destined to live and die in small-town Ontario. Into this place of monotony and petty incidents, of spiteful gossip and rigid moralism, appears Stephen Lassiter. Stephen is a Princeton-educated engineer from a wealthy New York family and Lucy's antithesis. Despite the chasm of their differences, they fall in love, marry, and begin life together in New York during the distressing years of the Second World War. It is a life that will nearly break Lucy in heart and spirit, however, as her husband faces disillusionment in his job and boredom in the serenity of his home life. While Stephen looks for excitement and approval elsewhere, Lucy must fight to retain her poise and dignity in order to survive. With its sustained contrast between the crushing deadness of small-town life and the glittering artificiality of New York City, MacLennan's third novel revealed a new level of maturity when it first appeared in 1948. A classic now back in print, with an introduction by renowned scholar and MacLennan biographer Elspeth Cameron, this timeless story portrays characters with a realism and fascination that is as rare as it is effective.

Hugh MacLennan

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