Hetty Dorval

By Ethel Wilson and Wilson Ethel

Book Overview

Seeking refuge from her mysterious past, the beautiful Mrs. Dorval arrives in a small British Columbia town at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers. As Frankie Burnaby, the young schoolgirl Mrs. Dorval befriends, pieces together Hetty's story, she begins to realize that her enigmatic idol is also a treacherous opponent.

Hetty Dorval, Wilson's first novel, is a wise and expertly crafted tale of innocence and experience.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771088892
• ISBN13: 9780771088896
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Magical novella about smashing your own idols

Ethel Wilson's first work is well worth reading if only for her exquisitely crafted prose; she is clearly one of the finest and most influential Canadian writers of the twentieth century. Her clear influence on Alice Munro is incredibly marked, and indeed HETTY DORVAL (like much of Wilson's other work) would fit beautifully right into a current issue of the NEW YORKER. In this coming-of-age novella, the heroine meets as a girl the beautiful and wealthy Hetty Dorval, who lives in her small British Columbian town under a cloud of gossip and suspicion. As the years pass, her encounters with Hetty multiply in different cities and continents, and she begins to realize that Hetty is much more than she claims to be. This is clearly a first work, and some of the scenes in the text (particularly near the end, with the revelation scene and the unlikely scene of Hetty spending the night in the heroine's bed) seem poorly thought through. But the famous closing sentences of the work show Wilson's larger ideational framework brilliantly, posing the question as to what finally really matters in the end when mere human corruption and fallibility is compared to genuine evil. The singular atmosphere of the tale--its lovely evocation of North American wilderness viewed through a wealthy class-conscious sensibility--also makes it a splendid work. This is a fine first work by a major writer, and deserves to be read in other countries besides its own.