Roy, Gabrielle (1909-83). Canadian novelist whose first work, Bonheur d'occasion (1945), is a classic of social realism and a landmark in Quebec literature. Breaking with the tradition of the rural novel, it depicted the poverty and social deprivation of the francophone working class of Montreal, at the time of World War II, with a pathos that is typical of her work and with a breadth of vision that she never again equalled. Apart from Alexandre Chênevert (1954), in which the theme of urban alienation is articulated through the figure of a lonely bank-clerk, and La Montagne secrète (1961), a somewhat laboured allegory of a painter in quest of his ideal, her subsequent works are slighter in scope and more personal in tone. Many of them are fictional sketches or semi-autobiographical short stories set in her native Manitoban prairies: La Petite Poule d'eau (1950), Rue Deschambault (1955), La Route d'Altamont (1966), Un jardin au bout du monde (1975), Ces enfants de ma vie (1977). Whether there or in other pastoral settings, like the Arctic north (La Rivière sans repos, 1970) or the Quebec countryside (Cet été qui chantait, 1972), they tend to concern sensitive characters in a quest for self-fulfilment and human understanding that is often ephemeral. The prevailing mood of her later work is one of compassion and sadness, quiet humour and precarious happiness—polarities that are reflected in the title of her posthumous autobiography, La Détresse et l'enchantement (1984).

[Ian Lockerbie]

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.