As part of my efforts to read more books by our neighbors to the north, more or less explained here, I've just finished Paul Quarrington's novel King Leary
. (As an aside, how interesting that Mexican novelists seem to get much, much more play here as exotic writers than do Canadians.)
I liked it a great, great deal, despite the fact that it's a serious novel about a pro hockey player, and I generally don't like professional sports-themed literature. Structurally, the book reminds me of The Good Soldier
--always a very good thing for me--in that the narrator is extremely unreliable (based mostly on his own ineptitude) and the book heavily uses flashback and digression to complicate the telling of the story. The narrative voice is also excellent; it's a kind of mix of Irish and Canadian vernacular with a good deal of hockey slang thrown in, and Quarrington really mines it for innovative constructions without getting showy or cutesy.
This is a fine one to start off my tour of the Great White North with--just the kind of thing to make me want to read on.
