Phillis Brett Young’s daughter, Valerie Argue, responds to a few questions about the rebirth of her mother’s novels

  October 2008   978-0-7735-3490-2 

MQUP. By the time your mother died in 1996, her books had gone out of print.  Her second novel, The Torontonians (first published in 1960), was reissued in October 2007, her first novel, Psyche (1959), this October 2008. You must be pleased.

VA. Very. I’m grateful to Nathalie Cooke and Suzanne Morton of McGill University for getting the ball rolling and writing Introductions, and to McGill-Queen’s University Press for their republication.

MQUP. What has surprised you most about the reissues?

VA.  Of The Torontonians, the interest of young new Canadians who want to know more about the way it was and who see fascinating parallels with the way it is.  Of Psyche, it’s too soon to say, but in going over numerous original reviews I was amazed at the virtually unanimous enthusiasm- “couldn’t put it down”, said most.

MQUP.  How well do you remember the decade when your mother’s six books were published?

VA.  Quite well.  While she was planning Psyche, the nature/ nurture question was a frequent dinner-table conversation, and when it was published I was certainly very excited for her.  But by then I was a young adult, busy with my own life, so I didn’t have the perspective or degree of involvement that I have now.

MQUP.  How have you been involved?

VA.  Writing a forward for both novels, then doing what I could to publicize them.

MQUP.  How easy is that?

VA.  On one level quite easy. Authors, booksellers, readers have been remarkably supportive, and as I’m my mother’s only living relative it’s been a wonderful way to celebrate her life.  Those newspaper articles that have been written about The Torontonians have also been positive, but it is difficult to get print coverage of dead authors.
 

MQUP.  Why, do you think?

VA.  Partly the way newspapers and magazines are being squeezed, but also an old ambivalence about recognizing our past.  I started out to champion my mother’s books because I believed readers would still enjoy them; increasingly I do so because I believe that someone described in the early 60s as probably Canada’s best-selling novelist is an important part of its literary and social history.

Valerie Argue welcomes feedback or further questions.