Scene Magazine reviews A Week of This

Set in a small Ontario town named Dunbridge, A Week of This is an intimate portrait of lower middle-class adults in a one-week vignette. Highly episodic, the reader follows the brutally honest and real insights of a dysfunctional group of individuals that have either originated or ended up in Dunbridge. the narrative is dished up in riveting quotidian chapters that alternate between the insights and existential dilemmas of these characters. There is nothing fantastic or superhuman about these people: the 38-year-old Manda who works in a failing call centre, pressured by her husband Patrick to have a child, and mediating her rage against her abusive mother and a current go-nowhere life; Patrick, whose sports store tucked at the end of a mall hovers perilously toward ruin; Marcus, a middle-aged hockey coach and resigned bachelor with his occasional bouts of employment, managing his nascent relationship with a woman with a child by a deadbeat dad; and Ken, an employee at Giant Tiger on a special government program for the mentally challenged, whose face was burned by his mother as a child leaving him permanently disfigured, now trying to negotiate both rumours of an impending layoff and wanting to leave his rooming house. The plot that unites each of these characters together is psychologically complex and dynamic despite the apparent plain commonality of their situations. Filled with vibrant, gritty imagery and wondrously colourful turns of phrase, author Nathan Whitlock succeeds admirably in striking a balance between region specificity and the universal appeal to a shared human condition. A Week of This is like an HBO reality television series given a sturdy literary backbone, and makes an ideal springtime read.

A Week of This: a novel in seven days by Nathan Whitlock $26.95 CAD Details Add to Cart