Memorable characters from all walks of life

The first of Farhoud’s novels to be translated into English, Hutchison Street retains the cadence and flavour of a francophone novel. Farhoud writes convincingly from both an outsider’s and an insider’s viewpoint, celebrating the diversity and energy of the book’s Montreal neighbourhood: “That’s what makes Hutchison Street so unique, a street split between Mile End and Outremont. Between Yaveh, God, Allah … or none of the above.” 
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November 2018, Montreal Review of Books

A joy to read

It was a real joy to read Hutchison Street, for all the stories were more or less told in a positive light, and the majority of the street’s residents were more than happy to live there. For anyone who has lived in a multicultural neighbourhood, Hutchison Street will undoubtedly bring back some memories. I rated it four stars at Goodreads and I will put it on my 2019 longlist for “The Very Best!” Book Awards for Fiction.
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September 2018, Miramichi Reader

A street at the heart of Montreal

Farhoud’s approach to Hutchison Street is lyrical and searching, a celebration of the street’s history, variety and potential. Hutchison Street draws a map, a rectangle of streets representing the small section of Montreal where its action takes place, with Rue Bernard as its northern border, Mount Royal Avenue is to the south, Parc to the west and Hutchison in the east. The rest of the city falls away as if it didn’t exist, the point being that Hutchison Street is itself a kind of self-contained village in the centre of a big city. Its occupants watch each other from balconies; they stop to chat on street corners; and houses stand side-by-side, while buildings divided into flats create even closer living quarters. People walk to do their shopping, to go to synagogue and to unwind after a busy day.

... Farhoud’s triumph in Hutchison Street is her willingness to avoid the common, even stereotypic, approaches to the street’s cultural divide. For her, it is a kind of theatre of everyday life, a true democratic place of meeting, of discourse and of belonging. Her pursuit of this aspect of contemporary Montreal is provocative and timely. As Abla Farhoud's characters see things, "Hutchison is not a problem street. It is an urban paradise, a theatre of potential discovery."
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May 2018, Canadian Jewish News

Characters as believable as their stories

March 28, 2018

Richard King reviews Montreal writer Abla Farhoud's Hutchison Street, translated by Judith Weisz Woodsworth, on Homerun on CBC Radio.