Jalna by Mazo de la Roche ~ 1927. This edition: Macmillan, 1977. Hardcover. ISBN: 333-02528-8. 290 pages.
My rating: 5.5/10
This dramatically romantic novel by a young Canadian writer won a literary prize of $10,000 upon its publication nearly a century ago: an astonishing amount for the time, equivalent to something like $132,000 in today’s currency. (I looked that bit up using a handy-dandy inflation-indexed currency converter I found online.)
Spurred on by her success, Mazo de la Roche went on to write another fifteen Ontario-set installments in the Whiteoaks family saga, creating something of a literary cottage industry of sequential books, assorted editions and collections, and theatrical, radio and filmed productions for the next fifty years.
I was well aware of this novel and its reputation as an iconic bit of literary Canadiana, but I hadn’t actually read it until this year.
My verdict: I’m not stacking up the other 15 on my night table for essential reading, though I might possibly poke my nose into another one if the mood feels right. I do have a number of them stashed away, found at a library book sale some years ago. I gave them to my mother, and she returned them with not much comment, which should have been a bit of a tip-off.
No hurry on the others, though. Jalna was not particularly compelling. In fact, only okayish is as far as I’m willing to commit myself on this one.
The plot in a nutshell: Wealthy matriarch Adeline Whiteoak is approaching her 100th birthday, and her various offspring and descendants circle round her angling for her slightly senile blessing.
One grandson unpopularily marries a local girl, by-blow of the man who once unsuccessfully courted one of Adeline’s daughters, while another brings home an American bluestocking. Both brides soon come to think that perhaps they have chosen the wrong brothers. The eldest of Adeline’s grandsons, broodingly charismatic, ceaselessly womanizing and still-single Renny, catches the eye of the American wife, while her spouse in turn dallies with his brother’s bride. Much chewing of the scenery ensues, helped along by the unmarried members of the family, Adeline’s two elderly sons and her much-past-her-prime passive-aggressive daughter.
Absolute soap opera. Think a lowish-rent Gone With the Wind, sans Civil War and southern drawls and a horribly likeable heroine, but with similar over-the-top romantic heart-throbbings and dirty little secrets. (Perhaps not really the best comparison, but it was what popped into my mind. It’s not really like GWTW at all. Perhaps Mazo de la Roche does stand alone.)
And there’s an elderly parrot, and a cheeky young boy, to provide much-needed levity, though not enough to ultimately save this overwrought thing from itself.
Leaves & Pages 
I read this one a couple of years ago and although I quite enjoyed it I remember thinking that the later ones in the series must be a lot better, given how popular they were. I haven’t got around to checking out that theory yet though.
I’ve been thinking I should dip into some of the other books in the series. Word is that Jalna is not the best of the lot, though it was the one that started the saga rolling.
Oo, it sounds just like A Tangled Web. Is it like A Tangled Web? Cause I super love that book (except the racism).
Well, it’s more linear in plotline than A Tangled Web, and not quite as “folksy”…actually the two aren’t really all that similar. Must say that A Tangled Web is one of my less favourite LMM novels. Though it ranks well above the awesomely dreadful Kilmeny of the Orchard. 😉
Hahahaha, okay, it’s one of my less favorite LMM novels. BUT STILL.
Every now and then, you toss Mazo de la Roche into the mix and I have a literary flashback. I went searching for your previous reviews and my comments, so I think I’ve said it all now. :^)
Kilmeny of the Orchard. I can’t believe I loved that book at 13, because I certainly found it awesomely dreadful when I reread it, also many years ago.
I have a seriously large stack of Mazo de la Roche books – I think most of the Jalna series, plus an odd little non-Jalna novel called Delight – and every once in a while I get feeling guilty about not being keener to investigate them all. Perhaps the day may yet come. I did make it most of the way through Delight some years ago, put it down, and wandered off. I must say I did enjoy de la Roche’s highly self-edited autobiography, Ringing the Changes. An interesting author…in so many ways! (That series of 15 books – all apparently commercially successful – why don’t these receive the same literary attention as LMM’s books? If only to investigate their importance in Canadian popular culture of their time? M de la R seems to be quite neglected in academia, comparatively speaking, for such an immensely prolific and successful body of work.)
I read many of the Jalna books when I was a teen in the 60s, and I figured they were among the best stories I’d read.
II read these books about seventy years ago (in the 40’s onwards} and would probably hate them now but am going to re-read them to see if they are as wonderful as I remember them. I’ll let you know.
I don’t think you’ll hate them. And I fully intend to read at least a few more of the series at some point, because Mazo de la Roche is quite a decent writer and the books promise to be entertaining if a little soap opera-ish. 🙂 Please do let us know your reaction to your re-read. 🙂
Jalna was my mother’s favorite series. She managed to read voraciously while cooking all the meals, cleaning, laundry, driving us kids, part-time work, and all the other things mothers do. These were the only books for adults she kept when she and dad moved out of their life-long home – except, of course, for all of her favorite children’s picture books. I have them now, 75 cent paperbacks from discount stores of the 1970s. I can hardly get through them they are so saccharin and over-the-top! The main characters are all emotional teenagers at every age. I read them because I loved my mom and this is a way of remembering and knowing her. But each book goes into the paper recycle bin after finishing it!