Sylvia Maultash Warsh, the author of three mystery novels, now deftly turns her pen to a literary novel about a student in Toronto researching her thesis on E.J. Pratt’s epic poem Brébeuf and His Brethren.
Although The Queen of Unforgetting is not a whodunit as her previous acclaimed works are – she has won an Edgar Allen Poe Award – in a way, The Queen of Unforgetting is still a mystery novel, exploring secrets that lie buried in the murky waters of the protaganist’s past.
The novel begins with Mel Montrose nervously approaching the University of Toronto office of famed literary critic Northrop Frye to see if he would be her thesis adviser. With his assent, Mel then decides to spend the summer working at the reconstructed fort at Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons in order to research the life of the Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf..
But Mel brings a lot more baggage with her than her typewriter and scholarly notes. The fort is located close to her hometown of Midland, Ont., where her parents, whom she’s been estranged from, still live. And she’s being stalked by fellow student Hugh, whom she briefly dated. Hugh has become obsessed with her and threatens to reveal a secret about her that could destroy her academic career.
At first things go well. She rents a room at a house away from her parent’s neighbourhood. She enjoys her work as a tour guide at the fort and has plenty of time to work on her thesis outline. She also finds herself the object of attention of Jonathan, a tall, handsome man who’s playing the role of Brébeuf in a historical play being put on at the fort.
But to her dismay, Hugh follows her to Midland and finds out where she’s boarding. Mel is forced to take refuge at her parents’ home, where we find out Mel is really Malka Rosenberg, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors from Poland.
When she brings Jonathan home, her father says he reminds him of someone he knew in the war. When Jonathan presses, her father begins to reveal Holocaust stories Mel never heard before. Like her, both her parents have long-repressed secrets and guilt buried in their past.
There is another narrative in this book. Occasionally, Mel puts aside her thesis to write her own version of the Brébeuf tale. Much of the historical evidence that exists from this period is based on the letters the Jesuits sent back to France. These letters don’t tell the whole truth, since they were written with a positive spin so the people back home would continue their financial and moral support of the mission. As a diversion from her thesis, Mel decides to rewrite the story the way she imagines it happened.
Her tale of the missionaries, who were known as Black Robes, their hardships and eventual martyrdom deep in Huron territory is described in full grisly detail and is an interesting side plot. The massacre of the Hurons at the hands of the Iroquois neatly parallels the destruction of the Jews in Warsaw.
As a literary novel, and one about an English graduate student, this book is full of obvious literary devices including symbolism, foreshadowing, mixed metaphors, water imagery and pathetic fallacy. An English teacher’s wet dream.
The Queen of Unforgetting (Cormorant Books) is a well-told story that reveals its secrets slowly, with everything coming to a head in a fast-paced climactic, bloody and, of course, highly symbolic ending.
Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, a popular writer from the Republic of Georgia, the son of a Jewish mother. He’s written dozens of novels in Russian, some of which have been translated into English.
Akunin is primarily known for his classic-style mystery novels that take place in late 19th-century Russia. Imagine Dostoevsky writing Agatha Christie novels. There are currently two series of books translated – the Fandorin mysteries and the Sister Pelagia books. Although Judaism is hinted at on occasion in some of these books, Israel and Judaism play a major role in the last of three Sister Pelagia books, Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (Random House).
Sister Pelagia is a Russian Orthodox nun with a penchant for solving crimes, often in disguise and with a pair of deadly knitting needles hidden beneath her clothes.
In The Red Cockerel, a Russian Messianic figure is murdered on a boat to Jerusalem. Sister Pelagia’s trail of a strange cult that converts Russian Orthodox worshippers to Judaism takes her to Palestine, where she travels the length and breadth of the Holy Land.
From Russia, she sails to the Port of Jaffa and then rides on to Gaza. From there she hires a coach to take her across the Judean desert to Sodom, where a bizarre Zionist cult has set up a colony and finally on to Jerusalem and the climax at the Mount of Olives.
Russian nationalist anti-Semitic groups are featured prominently in the plot.
Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel is a funny, clever mystery novel written in 19th-century Russian style. Akunin’s fiction will appeal to lovers of Russian literature as well as those who enjoy mystery novels.
