The Ravine (raidergirl3)
Paul Quarrington has been in the news lately (in Canada) as the author of the winning Canada Reads book, King Leary. I haven’t read it yet, but when I got the opportunity to read his latest book, released March 11, 2008, I jumped.
And then I laughed my way through this book. Phil McQuigge is a fifty year old alcoholic, who has recently lost his wife and his job. Things aren’t looking so great for Phil. Interestingly, Quarrington describes the book as semi-autobiographical. Phil decides that much of his crappy life relates back to an incident in ‘the ravine’ when he and a friend and his brother met up with some mean teenagers one day. Phil decides to write a novel based on the incident, if only he could remember exactly what happened.
I’m sure this doesn’t sound like a funny book from my description, but Quarrington is very humorous, with irony and black comedy and straight-out funny lines. Phil’s brother Jay, who also made a mess of his life, is around if somewhat estranged, and continually refutes the details of Phil’s memories. I found this a rather timely discussion of memory, as there have been some recent news events with misplaced memories, and it is an area I find very interesting. Phil was also a teevee writer, and his famous television show (famous in Canada for 156 episode, it only played two episode in the States) is based on a movie he saw as a child (memories again.) Then you begin to question the narrator because if he doesn’t remember, how reliable is anything he tells us?
So, the book is a novel being written by the main character about his life, which is semi-autobiographical. If I thought about it I got confused, so instead I just sat back and enjoyed the self-deprecating humour. The ending was a little weird and I’m not exactly sure what to make of it, but it was worth the read to get to the end. I must look for King Leary now.
2008, 291 pages
Rating: 4/5
Popularity: 21% [?]
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