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A question of judgment
255 pages, Hardcover
First published January 19, 1970
5 people want to read
About the author
Phyllis Brett Young
10 books3 followersAlso published under pseudonym Kendal Young
Phyllis Brett Young was an internationally bestselling Canadian novelist.
Born in Toronto, Young was the daughter of Marion and George Sidney Brett, the latter a noted philosopher who wrote the first English-language history of psychology. After some time studying interior decorating at the Ontario College of Art, she married her longtime sweetheart, Douglas Young, and became a wife and mother.
As her daughter Valerie would later explain, her mother was a “product of a culture in which married women only went to work under extreme circumstances.” It was not until Valerie was a teen, and her husband secured work for a branch of the UN in Geneva, that Young found the time to evolve beyond short stories and write her first novel. Dinner-table discussions of nature versus nurture became Psyche, the story of a girl who struggles to find herself after being kidnapped from her wealthy parents and abandoned in a poor mining town. When Douglas urged her to submit the manuscript to publishers — something Phyllis was reluctant to do — her hobby become a career.
In just ten years (1959-1969), Phyllis Brett Young wrote four novels (Psyche, The Torontonians, Undine, and A Question of Judgment), a memoir about her summers in Muskoka (Anything Can Happen!), and a thriller experiment under the never-secret pseudonym Kendal Young (The Ravine). It was estimated that her first three books reached ten million readers throughout the world, making her one of the rare mid-century Canadian scribes to earn world recognition.
Young excelled at capturing the life of women between and beyond two World Wars, and her work spoke to mid-century womanhood before the rise of feminism. She was also a proud Canadian who strove to capture the cosmopolitan evolution of “Toronto the Good.” The Torontonians explored womanhood within a city caught between decorum, nationalism, and change, and Young fought against publishers who insisted that the novel lose its explicit Toronto-ness, dubbing it Gift of Time, The Gift of Time, and The Commuters. As she told the Ottawa Citizen, “I write because I love Canada and I wish more and more people would write about Canada as it is today.”
Ill health and familial obligations ended Young’s successful career. Never one for the spotlight, her work faded into obscurity. Phyllis Brett Young passed away in 1996, at the age of 82.
Eleven years later, the spotlight returned when McGill University posthumously republished two of her works, Psyche and The Torontonians.
Phyllis Brett Young was an internationally bestselling Canadian novelist.
Born in Toronto, Young was the daughter of Marion and George Sidney Brett, the latter a noted philosopher who wrote the first English-language history of psychology. After some time studying interior decorating at the Ontario College of Art, she married her longtime sweetheart, Douglas Young, and became a wife and mother.
As her daughter Valerie would later explain, her mother was a “product of a culture in which married women only went to work under extreme circumstances.” It was not until Valerie was a teen, and her husband secured work for a branch of the UN in Geneva, that Young found the time to evolve beyond short stories and write her first novel. Dinner-table discussions of nature versus nurture became Psyche, the story of a girl who struggles to find herself after being kidnapped from her wealthy parents and abandoned in a poor mining town. When Douglas urged her to submit the manuscript to publishers — something Phyllis was reluctant to do — her hobby become a career.
In just ten years (1959-1969), Phyllis Brett Young wrote four novels (Psyche, The Torontonians, Undine, and A Question of Judgment), a memoir about her summers in Muskoka (Anything Can Happen!), and a thriller experiment under the never-secret pseudonym Kendal Young (The Ravine). It was estimated that her first three books reached ten million readers throughout the world, making her one of the rare mid-century Canadian scribes to earn world recognition.
Young excelled at capturing the life of women between and beyond two World Wars, and her work spoke to mid-century womanhood before the rise of feminism. She was also a proud Canadian who strove to capture the cosmopolitan evolution of “Toronto the Good.” The Torontonians explored womanhood within a city caught between decorum, nationalism, and change, and Young fought against publishers who insisted that the novel lose its explicit Toronto-ness, dubbing it Gift of Time, The Gift of Time, and The Commuters. As she told the Ottawa Citizen, “I write because I love Canada and I wish more and more people would write about Canada as it is today.”
Ill health and familial obligations ended Young’s successful career. Never one for the spotlight, her work faded into obscurity. Phyllis Brett Young passed away in 1996, at the age of 82.
Eleven years later, the spotlight returned when McGill University posthumously republished two of her works, Psyche and The Torontonians.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 2, 2020
The final novel from author Phyllis Brett Young.
Before Margaret Atwood turned one of the first true-crime sensations into the novel Alias Grace, Young penned Judgment, a fictional account of a young Canadian teacher named Ashley who finds herself secretly intertwined in an international murder mystery. While the former adds real-world feelings to the people at the heart of a crime, the latter explores the actions and motivations of those immediately surrounding the events.
Judgment isn't about making definitive statements, but exploring the rationale around extraordinary and mundane events, and the many secret webs that surround them. As the police investigation unfolds on the radio, coincidence leads Ashley to become a reluctant secretive investigator, holding missing evidence and the secrets of those partially linked to the tragedy. She is a young woman struggling with both her first tastes of adulthood, and the responsibility of her confidences.
Young's protagonist is complicated woman with moral highs and lows, whose inner workings show just how much morality can fluctuate within one person. The reader is not allowed to agree, disagree, or abstain from Ashley's choices without first viewing how they work together. She is a woman working towards an atypical end, inspiring moments of agreement and aghast disagreement (by the reader and those around her).
Young was a writer skilled at revealing the unspoken in 50s-60s post-war women -- the intellectual worlds hidden behind more traditional performances of womanhood. In exploring that mind space, it's easy to start understanding the generations of women who came before, how times have changed, and how they stay the same.
That she is largely forgotten is a shame.
Before Margaret Atwood turned one of the first true-crime sensations into the novel Alias Grace, Young penned Judgment, a fictional account of a young Canadian teacher named Ashley who finds herself secretly intertwined in an international murder mystery. While the former adds real-world feelings to the people at the heart of a crime, the latter explores the actions and motivations of those immediately surrounding the events.
Judgment isn't about making definitive statements, but exploring the rationale around extraordinary and mundane events, and the many secret webs that surround them. As the police investigation unfolds on the radio, coincidence leads Ashley to become a reluctant secretive investigator, holding missing evidence and the secrets of those partially linked to the tragedy. She is a young woman struggling with both her first tastes of adulthood, and the responsibility of her confidences.
Young's protagonist is complicated woman with moral highs and lows, whose inner workings show just how much morality can fluctuate within one person. The reader is not allowed to agree, disagree, or abstain from Ashley's choices without first viewing how they work together. She is a woman working towards an atypical end, inspiring moments of agreement and aghast disagreement (by the reader and those around her).
Young was a writer skilled at revealing the unspoken in 50s-60s post-war women -- the intellectual worlds hidden behind more traditional performances of womanhood. In exploring that mind space, it's easy to start understanding the generations of women who came before, how times have changed, and how they stay the same.
That she is largely forgotten is a shame.
Displaying 1 of 1 review