This new novel by Daniel Poliquin, perhaps the best-known Franco-Ontarian writer, is set largely in Ottawa and spans the the first half of the 20th century. Through the eyes of characters both high- and low-born, French and English, we watch the old world of the 19th century fade.

The narrator, Lusignan, returns from the trenches of the First World War a haunted man. Aside from the expected shock of battle, he’s gripped by an obsession with his superior officer, d’Argenteuil, with whom he’s had a surprise sexual encounter. Lusignan himself is one of those aimless characters led by the nose, never making a real decision for himself and accepting life’s ups and downs like a dog following his master. Lusignan attaches himself to a society lady, Amalia Driscoll, because she was, like him, one of d’Argenteuil’s lovers. He steals her letters to d’Argenteuil and even writes back to her in the other man’s name.

It’s through Driscoll’s letters that Poliquin delivers his research into society life in early-20th-century Ottawa, and it’s as dull and pointless as you’d expect. Social graces, events, and attitudes bearing no relevance to us, Lusignan, or the plot are detailed at length in Driscoll’s pretentious and whining manner, making it easy to see why her fiancé would choose to leave her for the front.

Lusignan is picked up by Concorde, another immigrant to Ottawa and a charming, unpretentious nymphomaniac who sleeps with anyone she can. She somehow avoids becoming pregnant until she’s conveniently married, but none of the children are her husband’s. It’s Concorde who rises in the world while all the others fall, until she reaches her pinnacle, ending up a madame in a brothel.

This kind of thing lives or dies by its writing, and here, at least in this translation, the prose is mannered and monotonous. In the end, it’s all just one damn thing after another, with the characters weaving in and out of each other’s lives over the years, everyone’s dreams unrealized and their lives inconsequential.