by Amelia Gordon
Just in time for summer – a book for the cottage and the beach. Terry Fallis’ fourth novel, No Relation, came out in May. Hard to recall the days when he had to self publish The Best Laid Plans, an hilarious take on Canadian politics. That book later won the 2008 Stephen Leacock award for humour and was voted the winner of the 2011 CBC Canada Reads. The Best Laid Plans was made into a 6 part CBC miniseries. Now, in No Relation, he has moved the scene to New York and his protagonist is the American scion of a successful underwear company Hemmingwear who doesn’t want to run it. The poor chap wants to be a writer.
The name comes from the surname of our character’s family, the Hemmingways of Chicago and they had the unfortunate habit of naming their first born sons Earnest. Now this was fine in the dying days of the 19th century, before the author Ernest Hemingway became an American literary icon, but to bear that name in the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st is a curse, opening one up to ridicule, suspicion and tired jokes.
In the opening chapters, our hero, Earnest Hemmingway has his wallet stolen, is laid off his job as a copywriter in New York and his girlfriend moves out all in one day. He is back to zero in his forties, more or less, although as the heir to the family underwear company and with a good settlement from his employer, he does have freedom. What he does with it is the subject of the book.
Fallis has a sly sense of humour and frequently talks directly to his audience, as though he were conversing with them – which in fact, he is. His is not”laugh out loud” humour but quiet “aha” humour. We follow him through his attempt at group therapy (he organizes a group called Namefame) to gather other poor souls with famous names, travels in the writer Hemingway’s footsteps and eventually winds up in the family home in Chicago. It is a straightforward story with a beginning, middle and end with some stylish twists in between; a picaresque journey and rather delightful. His quiet sense of humour shoots through it.
Take this book to the cottage and while away a few hours with a coffee or martini on a rainy day, or on a sunny one on the dock.
No Relation is published by McLelland and Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited
