John Lent, Monet's Garden

Craig McLuckie (Okanagan College)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.2: Canadian Writing and Culture (Anglophone): The Twentieth Century and beyond, 1900-present.
Vol. editors: Sarah Henzi (Simon Fraser University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1996

Places

Canada (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
- Bildungsroman
Story Collection

Resources

Monet's Garden is a discontinuous narrative of asymmetrical structure; an interweaving of connected stories with elliptical, interconnected pieces on the narrator of the book. John Lent's linked story sequence offers a complex and sensitive evocation of being. The author's post-modern structure dramatizes an ongoing disintegration and recuperation of self in the unnamed narrator, whose six “Roof” vignettes intersperse the six stories of other characters: Rick, Jane, Neil, and Charles Connolly. As a whole, Monet's Garden is an exemplary bildungsroman in its story of an individual's growth and development within the context of a defined social order. The social order is late twentieth-century Western (Canadian) …

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1112 words

Citation: McLuckie, Craig. "Monet's Garden". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 February 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11946, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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