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howlingly funny . . . if you love books and really need a good laugh in your life, track it down
I met a bunch of interesting characters last week.
One of them was agoraphobic, another a raving environmentalist and the last a bookworm. And what did they all have in common? This trio are protagonists in three very readable novels about people you don't meet everyday.
According to the publisher's blurb, after Toronto author Tish Cohen wrote "Town House" (HarperCollins, $17.95) in under a month, publishers and film companies had a feeding frenzy over rights. Ridley Scott snapped up the movie rights while Doug Wright ("Memoirs of a Geisha") is set to write the screenplay.
So what's the fuss all about? Jack Madigan is the agoraphobic son of a rock star known for his on-stage madness. After licking a snapping turtle, Bozgot snapped, leading to an infectious death. Jack was only nine when it happened. Now, he lives in Baz's Boston townhouse, has been abandoned by his wife, is going broke and is unable to venture beyond his front door.
Into this mix comes a neophyte real estate agent named Dorrie, Jack's son Harlan who is his link with the outside world and Lucinda, a pre-teen who appears in Jack's house via a hole in the wall. The entire mob gets involved in some very funny doins, many of which have to do with Jack's inability to get out that door.
In Jack Madigan, Cohen has created a very memorable and sympathetic creature who is not only eccentric but deserves a bunch of adjectives such as wry, touching and lovable.
Written in a breezy, off-hand matter that suits the subject, "Town House" lives up to its media hype.
Cordelia Stube is a master at what is often called "dark humour." In her last novel, "Blind Night" (2003), her heroine is a hairdresser who loses her colour sense after a car accident, seeing only in black and white. Strube returns with her seventh novel, Planet Reese (Dundurn, $21.99), a hilarious send-up of one man's obsession with an increasingly endangered world.
Reese Larking's wife has left him and is filing for divorce, turning social workers loose on her husband when she suspects him of child molestation (nothing could be further from the truth). Reese, who has been fired by Greenpeace for being too negative about the health of the planet, works for a call centre that pesters people for donations.
Now living in a basement, wearing plastic sandals that smell toxic, and sleeping on a mouldy futon (a hilarious on-going joke is Reese's attempt to find a comfortable mattress), he reacts at any environmental betrayal, trotting out reams of environmental babble. In fact, Reese has a trio of voices he calls Mrs. Ranty, Scout Leader Igor and Mrs. Stinkman who set up a constant screed of righteous comments on conservation inside his head.
There are numerous subplots including an upstairs neighbour who works in a topless bar, a bunch of drinking buddies that act as foils for Reese's ongoing domestic tragedies, and call centre characters dialing that phone. But mostly what you get is Reese in all his on-rushing madness. Maybe there is a bit too much of Reese in a novel that feels like it should have ended 100 pages earlier. Still, I have to admit I had 340 laughs in its 340 pages. Strube's satire is sometimes over the top but comes a welcome antidote in these "the sky is falling" days.
Thomas Friesen, the anti-hero of Corey Redekop's howlingly funny debut novel "Shelf Monkey" (ECW Press, $18.95) is ready made for bibliophiles searching for a role model. A died-in-the-wool bookworm, he has landed a job at Winnipeg's READ, one of those mega-bookstores staffed by wonderful nerds who actually love books. "READ, as I'm sure you all know by now, is the newest mega-box-hyper-super-huge bookstore, a massive expanse of novels, textbooks, music DVDS and book-related paraphernalia. Fields of fiction. Whole square kilometers of history. Leagues of health, science, pets, gay issues and more . . . Oh God, it's Heaven."
He reflects, "There is no better feeling in the world than entering a space filled with books . . . lined up like prostitutes on the street, c'mon honey, whatchoo want, I'll make you happy, you looking for a good time?" Joining a bookish gang of similar stack stubbies who look on books as nutrition, Thomas takes the name Yossarian as they weekly gather around a burn barrel on the fringes of the city. There, like the characters in Ray Bradbury's "Farenheit 451" with their bookish names, they debate the value of literature, vote and then take action. But, instead of memorizing a book, they burn what they agree has no place in print - among them "Chicken Soup For the Crack-Addicted Soul" and the novels of Anne Rice.
And they begin plotting to do in Munroe Purvis, a talk show TV host who panders to the lowest possible literary taste. One of the authors Purvis makes famous explains that before the show, he had never read an entire book before. When Purvis the purveyor of dreck shows up in their city, they kidnap him, not so gently tattooing his body with the names of the books they admire.
"Shelf Monkey" is a parody aimed at the heart of Oprah lovers. Sometimes in Redekop's fevered imagination, it goes too far with easy targets at which to shoot. But if you love books and really need a good laugh in your life, track it down, read it, and then shelve it next to some really serious books which will then automatically lighten up.
I am pleased to have met Jack Madigan, Reese Larking and Thomas Friesen. They certainly made my summer much more fun.
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