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One Way Street
250 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
21 people want to read
About the author
Marian Engel
24 books78 followersCanadian novelist, short-story and children's fiction writer, Marian Engel was a passionate activist for the national and international writer’s cause.
She was the first chair of the Writer’s Union of Canada (1973–74) and helped found the Public Lending Right Commission. From 1975-1977, she served on the City of Toronto Book Award Committee (an award she won in 1981 for Lunatic Villas) and the Canadian Book and Periodical Development Council.
In 1982 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
She married Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio producer Howard Engel in 1962 and, upon their return to Toronto from England in 1964, began to raise a family--twins William Lucas Passmore and Charlotte Helen Arabella--and to pursue a writing career. Marian and Howard separated in 1975 and divorced in 1977.
Engel was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta (1977–1978) and at the University of Toronto (1980–1982).
Her first novel, No Clouds of Glory, was published in 1968. She wrote two children's books: Adventures of Moon Bay Towers (1974) and My name is not Odessa Yarker (1977). Her most famous and controversial novel was Bear(1976), a tale of erotic love between a librarian and a bear, for which she won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in 1976.
From 1965 to her death in 1985 she corresponded with literary peers and friends such as Hugh MacLennan, Robertson Davies, Dennis Lee, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence, Matt Cohen, Robert Weaver, Graeme Gibson and more. Some of this correspondence can be found in Dear Hugh, Dear Marian: The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence (1995) and Marian Engel: Life in Letters (2004).
After her death in 1985, the Writer's Development Trust of Canada instituted the Marian Engel Award, which was presented annually to a woman writer in mid-career. The Engel and Findley Awards are no longer awarded separately, but were combined into the new Writers’ Trust Notable Author Award as of 2008.
She was the first chair of the Writer’s Union of Canada (1973–74) and helped found the Public Lending Right Commission. From 1975-1977, she served on the City of Toronto Book Award Committee (an award she won in 1981 for Lunatic Villas) and the Canadian Book and Periodical Development Council.
In 1982 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
She married Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio producer Howard Engel in 1962 and, upon their return to Toronto from England in 1964, began to raise a family--twins William Lucas Passmore and Charlotte Helen Arabella--and to pursue a writing career. Marian and Howard separated in 1975 and divorced in 1977.
Engel was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta (1977–1978) and at the University of Toronto (1980–1982).
Her first novel, No Clouds of Glory, was published in 1968. She wrote two children's books: Adventures of Moon Bay Towers (1974) and My name is not Odessa Yarker (1977). Her most famous and controversial novel was Bear(1976), a tale of erotic love between a librarian and a bear, for which she won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in 1976.
From 1965 to her death in 1985 she corresponded with literary peers and friends such as Hugh MacLennan, Robertson Davies, Dennis Lee, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence, Matt Cohen, Robert Weaver, Graeme Gibson and more. Some of this correspondence can be found in Dear Hugh, Dear Marian: The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence (1995) and Marian Engel: Life in Letters (2004).
After her death in 1985, the Writer's Development Trust of Canada instituted the Marian Engel Award, which was presented annually to a woman writer in mid-career. The Engel and Findley Awards are no longer awarded separately, but were combined into the new Writers’ Trust Notable Author Award as of 2008.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 18, 2022
Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded down for being such a let-down
The Publisher Said: Her first two books, Sarah Bastard's Notebook and The Honeyman Festival, demonstrated that Marian Engel is a Canadian novelist with a marvelous talent for portraying women. In One Way Street (formerly titled Monodromos), we meet another one of her heroines. Audrey Moore, intelligent Canadian, 36—facts which help her not at all during her solourn on a Greek island where she is staying with her estranged husband, a has-been concert pianist with sexual proclivities that do not include Audrey. Although she senses that life on the island will be a one-way street for her, the heroine becomes deeply involved in the island's characters and finally takes a Greek lover—to the disgust of an island crone who sits in Audrey's doorway loudly lamenting the young woman's sins to passersby. The tensions of Audrey's island life explode in a hilarious finale as she ends her stay with pilgrimage to a Greek monastery where the Bishop attempts her seduction. A tragi-comic masterpiece, One Way Street is an intensely readable novel about Canadians in an alien land.
I BORROWED THIS BOOK FROM ARCHIVE.ORG HERE.
My Review: I read this book because Jo Walton liked it. Me? Well...it was okay. I certainly didn't hate it. I was slightly surprised that Author Marian Engel was married to [Howard Engel] whose Benny Cooperman mysteries I read in the 1980s. They're not stylistically similar at all, in the manner of divorced spouses around the world I suppose.
This book failed me by being a "straight-woman-saves-gay-ex" narrative that portrays him as a hapless and manipulative with it ne'er-do-well. Now, in 2022, I am less horrified and more simply impatient with that kind of dumb-man stuff. But it not only colored but darkened my appreciation for Author Engel's lovely descriptive prose and perceptive aperçus.
The Publisher Said: Her first two books, Sarah Bastard's Notebook and The Honeyman Festival, demonstrated that Marian Engel is a Canadian novelist with a marvelous talent for portraying women. In One Way Street (formerly titled Monodromos), we meet another one of her heroines. Audrey Moore, intelligent Canadian, 36—facts which help her not at all during her solourn on a Greek island where she is staying with her estranged husband, a has-been concert pianist with sexual proclivities that do not include Audrey. Although she senses that life on the island will be a one-way street for her, the heroine becomes deeply involved in the island's characters and finally takes a Greek lover—to the disgust of an island crone who sits in Audrey's doorway loudly lamenting the young woman's sins to passersby. The tensions of Audrey's island life explode in a hilarious finale as she ends her stay with pilgrimage to a Greek monastery where the Bishop attempts her seduction. A tragi-comic masterpiece, One Way Street is an intensely readable novel about Canadians in an alien land.
I BORROWED THIS BOOK FROM ARCHIVE.ORG HERE.
My Review: I read this book because Jo Walton liked it. Me? Well...it was okay. I certainly didn't hate it. I was slightly surprised that Author Marian Engel was married to [Howard Engel] whose Benny Cooperman mysteries I read in the 1980s. They're not stylistically similar at all, in the manner of divorced spouses around the world I suppose.
This book failed me by being a "straight-woman-saves-gay-ex" narrative that portrays him as a hapless and manipulative with it ne'er-do-well. Now, in 2022, I am less horrified and more simply impatient with that kind of dumb-man stuff. But it not only colored but darkened my appreciation for Author Engel's lovely descriptive prose and perceptive aperçus.
Displaying 1 of 1 review