Montreal as a Multicultural Urban Setting in Recent English-Language Fiction from Quebec (David Homel and Gail Scott)

Montreal as a Multicultural Urban Setting in Recent English-Language Fiction from Quebec (David Homel and Gail Scott)

The cultural, political and territorial ambiance of Quebec after the Quiet revolution, since the 1970s has considerably changed. A new generation of writers have emerged on the literary scene who continue to write in English in the officially French province of Canada. My intention is to compare two representative city novels: David Homel’s Midway (2010), and Gail Scott’s The Obituary (2010). I focus on the different representations of the same phenomeon: Homel’s experience of “multiplicity” is in sharp contrast to Scott’s sceptical portrayal of the multicultural and multiethnic reality of Montreal. The novels testify that more realities exist in the city.This is unambigously manisfest in the city’s soundscape, a fully integrated part of urban space; therefore, the protagonists’ language awareness, their altering attitude towards the city’s cacophony is also under scrutiny in the paper. The characters are poistioned differently, and the authors employ different writing techinques, too. In one case it is more traditional and linear (Homel), and in the other case it is experimental, fragmentated (Scott). By drawing comparisons, I intend to show that it is possible to embrace the diversity that characterizes urban existence in Montreal in more than one way.