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	• No Crystal Stair Mairuth Sarsfield Women's Press (CA), 2004 - 248 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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This is the story of one widowed woman's struggle to rear her girl children to be color blind, and to think that they can become whatever they want in an atmosphere where racism and sexism still exists.

The book could almost read like a screenplay there are many memorable characters who demand their place in the sun, whether the reverend trying to maintain peace among people of many cultures at a wedding, or the former missionary too naive to realize that black people can be born and raised in Canada.

This is book that runs the gambit of humor to sadness. I can't wait to read what might come next from this author.

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Important, yet.

Like Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute, Mairuth Saursfield's No Crystal Stair is set in Montreal during World War II. Unlike The Tin Flute, No Crystal Stair offers up the black perspective of Montreal during that time. It's an interesting contrast to Roy's classic to be sure. In fact, it's an interesting contrast to most Canadian novels. In the gamut of Canadian literature, a few non-white books come to mind. Obasan by Joy Kogawa, Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King are two examples. But I had yet to come across a book told from a black point-of-view. This is not to say that such novels aren't out there, it's just to point out that they are perhaps not as common as they should be considering the number of black people in Canada.
With this to its advantage, No Crystal Stair is an important book. It details an enormous amount of Canada's black history including railroad building, our Caribbean connection, and the jazz influence on our music scene to name but a few topics. It also details racism in overt and subtle forms. It is a very informative, enlightening book.
It is not however, a particularly good book. The first major flaw is the dialogue. The characters speak in over-the-top, lengthy, philosophical speech, even quoting entire poems during everyday conversation. One eccentric speaking like this might be believable. An entire cast of characters speaking like this seems entirely pretend, and a not so subtle way for the author to express her own personal feelings.
The second and perhaps biggest flaw is the plot, or the complete absence of any major one. Even the book jacket seems to be stretching for a plot when it describes a love triangle between Marion, Torrie and Edmond. Don't believe it. That is but a side story to about a dozen other side stories, none of which are compelling in the least. It jumps from mundane plot to mundane plot like the Monday to Thursday plotlines of any soap opera when you know all the good stuff happens on Friday. This book has no Friday.
Canadian novels are usually highly critically acclaimed compared to those coming from our neighbours to the south. Don't believe me? Where are Canada's Steven Kings? Maybe a reason for this praise is that critics seem to prefer character-driven novels versus plot driven novels. While I do think it possible to write a good plot-driven novel, I tend to agree with the critics. Character-driven novels seem more intelligent and psychological in their style. Life, to me, seems slower and more thought out than most plot-driven novels seem to depict. I'm sure fans of No Crystal Stair would argue its merits saying that this is such a character-driven novel. But it is not driven at all! It is stalled and never gets going. Think of Carol Shields' Unless. That book is character driven. The plot isn't an terrorist espionage story or some alien take-over book, but the plot (central character searches for the reason her daughter chooses to live off the streets of Toronto) is consistent and interesting, while focusing on the emotions of those involved. There is nothing that compares in No Crystal Stair.
Because of the absence of other novels in Canada that deal with black issues and history, No Crystal Stair is an important read, but only until somebody does it better. And I hope they do.

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No Crystal Stair is an absorbing novel that explores an increasingly difficult contemporary reality: functioning as though White while surviving as Black. Marion Willow, a proud young widow, must work at two jobs to ensure that her three girls develop lifestyles not hindered by class and colour. The bitter-sweet experience of Marion?s elegant American expatriate neighbour, Torrie Delacourt, could help the girls survive Canada?s subtle racism, which, though not legislated, wounds and hems them in. But the women?s rivalry for the love of Edmund Thompson, a handsome railway porter, pits them against one another. With humour and sensitivity, No Crystal Stair reveals both the conflict and the human heart of the proud, tightly knit Black community of the Little Burgundy district of Quebec in the mid-forties. It recaptures the days when Montreal was a cosmopolitan hub. It was a city inhabited by jazz musicians, café society, artists, gangsters ? those whose world revolved around Rockhead?s Paradise ? and others who clung to the community church at the end of prohibition, the depression and the anxious years of World War II.

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