Book Review: Montmorency Thief, Liar, Gentleman

493 is a thief in London England, 1875. He uses two identities and London’s newly opened sewer system to perform mostly dull and simple crimes. In London the sweet life is only one sin away, but how long will 493’s charade last? Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman had an intriguing storyline but lacked action. It was slowly driven and the characters motives and depth were null and void. Though the potential was huge, the end product was not.

As I stated earlier I feel the character building was poor. The characters were not driven enough to make the story plausible and their pasts are unspoken of. This made some sections of the story quite dull and unenjoyable. I also wrote that the story was slow, the character’s non-existent motives drawing any action out. There is no real conflict throughout the book because 493’s crimes are uninteresting and don’t have much detail or action. This slow tempo continues throughout the novel and there is no suspense or mystery to keep you interested. At some points in the story I felt as if Updale was going to elaborate on some personality disorders/conflict between Montmorency and Scarper. But this small observation never developed into a fully blown idea. What a loss!

This book may not have been my favourite but it does have merits. It was strong in the area of imagination. The author (Eleanor Updale) had an idea and pursued the topic until the end. The book may have been dull but it was understandable and clear, the vocabulary was vivid and yet I didn’t need a dictionary. I particularly enjoyed the length of this book as well. It expressed many ideas in a concise story, that ended when it really needed to!

“ ‘You have completed your sentence, and it is time for you to return to the world outside…’ And so, suddenly, he wasn’t 493 anymore.”

What were the opinions of European (white) children about residential schools between 1880 and 1900? If the children voiced their concerns would residential schools have been re-thought sooner?

We hear a lot about First Nations children when we talk about residential schools. I got to thinking, because there is always more than one side to every story, what did the white/European children think about residential schools? That’s where this project started, with a not so simple question, what were the opinions of white children about residential schools between 1880 and 1900? If the children had voiced any concerns, would residential schools have been re-thought sooner?

I started researching this question and didn't find much information on white children. I did find that they were very submissive. This means that the opinions of their parents (most likely their father) was deemed their opinion too! Most of the parents in 1880-1900 thought residential schools were smart. They were lead to believe (by the government) that the “Indians” would try and overrule them to start war, the government's “solution” was assimilation. This doesn’t guarantee that the children had contradicting thoughts, it also doesn’t mean that the parents were aware of the extensive abuse practiced in the schools either. Based off the limited information I was able to gather, I infer that if told about the abuse in residential schools children wouldn’t have agreed with residential schools. Though if they weren’t told about the abuse they might have thought the schools good for education! Obviously they were not.