Recently, our school’s student book club met and discussed our first book of the year: The Piano Man’s Daughter, by local favourite Timothy Findley. First published in 1995, it remains an excellent novel for a Grade 12 University class; it is as full of symbolism, historical relevance, and literary allusion as Canadian Literature can get.

The students shared a lot of ideas and discussed the ants and their City of Thebes, James’ abacus, and the wreath of flowers, as well as the town of McCaskill’s Mills, the Great Toronto Fire, and the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The highlight for me of our lunch-time meeting was the student-posed question, “Do you think Lily Kilworth is a Hamlet-like character?” Wow. I didn’t coerce the students into this train of thought; indeed, it hadn’t even occurred to me. But I’ve been able to think of little else since.

It makes sense. If we reverse genders, then Lily = Hamlet and Lizzie Wyatt = Ophelia. Also, Ede could be Gertrude and Frederick Wyatt could be Claudius with his dead brother, ‘the piano man’ Tom Wyatt certainly filling the role of the dead king Hamlet. The parallels are endless:

• Frederick Wyatt steps in and marries the ‘widowed’ Ede Kilworth
• Frederick is cruel to Ede’s daughter, Lily, and sends her to her fate (locked up in the attic)
• Lily is suicidal; she would melt, thaw, and resolve herself into a dew
• Lily’s wit is diseased, and she is dangerous; she must not unwatched go
• Lily is haunted by the ghost of her uncle John Fagan; she holds discourse with the incorporal air
• The ghost tries to inspire Lily to kill, to avenge his most foul and unnatural incarceration
• Like Ophelia after Polonius’ death, so Lizzie after his meddling father’s death immediately loses his mind and dies

… and on and on.

The Piano Man’s Daughter is a great novel for high school students to read, study, and write about.