The Torontonians

This unique novel is a period piece in a double sense. Published in 1960, it deliberately mirrors the era of Toronto's transition and expansion, for better and worse, of the late fifties. Karen, the protagonist, notices her city with remarkable insight. Various passages could be excerpted for a social history of the age and place. Remarkably, these passages are never gratuitous, but arise naturally during Karen's character development. Of upper middle-class British stock, a vexed graduate of (what sounds like) the Bishop Strachan School and (bucking her background) University College in the University of Toronto, Karen is a homemaker with a good marriage and no career. She does all her own housework with the aid of the latest electrical appliances, which liberate her to think morbid thoughts. The "electric dishwasher" is noted several times. A nagging discontent with life in her wealthy suburb (York Mills, perhaps) leads her to flirt with the idea of suicide. Too conventional and faithful for an affair, her final resolution of this quandary occurs with her husband in the roof-bar of the Park Plaza Hotel, window table (looking south) and is bound up with her view of the city. The original artwork for the cover paper shows the then-new City Hall and a martini glass. More to the point would have been a cigaret. Karen smokes incessantly, even with her doctor--in his office. Under stress, (non-alcoholic) characters drink martinis before noon. There is no great excitement here; the plot's central mystery--not Karen's--is resolved civilly and without scandal. The book had a great success in its day and deserves one now. In "The Torontonians" social history and characterization skillfully play in tandem.