The Fearsome Particles

by Trevor Cole

Trevor Cole’s bestselling debut novel garnered rave reviews and comparisons to Truman Capote and Kingsley Amis. Now the Governor General’s Award finalist is back with The Fearsome Particles, a brilliantly observed comic tragedy about the widening cracks in a family’s picture-perfect veneer.

Gerald Woodlore, a window screen executive, wakes one morning to find, to his utter dismay, that he has reached the limits of what he can control. The company he works for is rapidly losing market share and a junior assistant seems to be the only one with an idea how to fix it. His wife, Vicki, a luxury real-estate dresser, appears to be bending under the pressures of constructing an image of perfect happiness both at work and at home. But most worrying of all is Gerald and Vicki’s twenty-year-old son, Kyle, who quit school to volunteer with the military’s civilian support staff in Afghanistan. Now he has returned early and retreated to his room in the wake of a mysterious and traumatic event.

With his trademark wit and strong emotional insight, Trevor Cole has created a compelling, tender story that captures a family at a crucial turning point.

The Fearsome Particles has recently been optioned for film.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

352 pages, Hardcover

First published August 29, 2006

About the author

Trevor Cole (born Trevor William Cole on February 15, 1960) is a Canadian novelist and journalist. His first two novels, Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life (2004) and The Fearsome Particles (2006), were nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Reviews

[kimberly_rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hope Makes Love: that's the book to read by Trevor Cole. First one I read by him. Breathtaking. The characters were so alive, so individual, so piercing in their struggles, I loved them. The ending was outstanding, his characteristic "simple yet impactful" shone and the plotting beat, the crescendo, the come down, all brilliant, never hesitated.

Fearsome Particles, the only other book in his oeuvre that looked like my fruity full-bodied glass of red, was... readable. I read the whole thing, but I lost interest with only 30 pages left.

Cole has a poetic, graceful... stopping sort of way with words: he makes me stop and reread out loud small phrases, striking sentences that capture something simple, something profound, in a surprisingly big way.

Fearsome Particles starts and maintains a strong story, but my interest dissipated: the story was overlong. While Hope Makes Love just grew bigger and deeper into my mind, this one frustrated me. Too much time and detail was spent bemoaning Vicki's and Gerald's stagnating issues, while Kyle, the son, had a enormous traumatic-event-related secret, that felt rushed and unfinished. (What the hell happened to his rough friend?) I felt like I was given: FLASH--okay, yup, that's all you get. Back to mom and dad.

Three (alternating by chapters) points of view kept Fearsome Particles lively: the wife and husband each had their own third person centric perspectives, and the son had his first person voice. The son's voice was the most engaging, the most intimate, of course, but it wasn't because he was the only one with an "I" view: his struggles, his personality, his interactions, his desires, were fascinating, visceral. The mom and dad, while realistic, were annoyingly suburban, something I can sympathize with but am quickly frustrated by if the character struggles too long and too weakly with their still, whitebread lives of numbness, running the wheel, unthinking.

I did, overall, though, connect with everyone and wanted everyone to be okay, to have a new, more meaningful, more aware day-to-day, which I think they did achieve, Despite the petered out ending.

Read Hope Makes Love. Then try this one. Let me know what you think about how they compare.

[Kiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up The Fearsome Particles because I loved Cole's subsequent book, Practical Jean. In The Fearsome Particles we get foreshadowing of Cole's fine ability to tease sadness and psychological trauma from mundane comedic events—especially in the first third of the book. It is tempting to rest only on the hilarity of the funny scenes themselves—a Machiavellian cat and a central female character's neglect of her toenails provide gut-wrenching out-loud laughing—but they are never "just" funny. There is always more, and the more can be achingly painful. The Fearsome Particles is really a story of a couple in crisis—they've forgotten how to feel and are coasting bizarrely on a meaningless superficial layer of life, reduced to being caricatures or neurotic jokes. Their son's horrendous disassembling following a work stay in Afghanistan jolts them inelegantly and flailingly out of their bubbles. The Fearsome Particles is amazingly ambitious and mostly successful—not always even (some metaphors were overworked, some scenes needed a trim) but rewarding and among books I call "lasting reads."

Also, I think Trevor Cole is one of the most talented writers working in Canada today.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

so disappointed! I really wanted to like this book. I liked the writing style and was hopeful at the beginning. But as a read further I quickly lost interest in the dismal problems of the 3 characters in this family. Really, Dad's problem with his window screen company and the mother's house staging business just didn't captivate my interest. I could see the potential about a family facing mental health issues. the book just didn't do a good job at relating this or making me buy into it all.

[Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. I don't know how an author can be simultaneously so funny and not lose sight of the tragic story behind. Just as I posted mid-way that I was giggling my head off, the story broke my heart. And never put it back together.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trevor Cole has become one of my favourite authors. Always funny and brilliant in how he captures our humanity. This look at how we try to control the uncontrollable had me both laughing out loud and rereading some of his phrases and passages in appreciation.

[Ellen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really had trouble engaging with this story. I found I could have cared less about the father's problems at work (although the bizarre story about the sales and marketing person and the screens that couldn't be seen through was kinda' funny – as long as the author meant it to be funny – if he didn't then I'm at a loss to explain) and cared even less about the mother's staging business (and her toenails). The son's story was the most interesting and yet we get so little to explain his mental health problems and subsequent decisions. I did finish the book in hopes that there would be resolutions of some sort, but sadly I was disappointed.

[Gloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gerald Woodlore and his wife Vickie have lived very ordered lives controlling everything and making everything run smoothly. They wanted no surprises, no ripples in their world. Even with each other they maintained a steady equilibrium and steady routine. Their son surprises them and heads off to Afghanistan for a year to handle water supply at a Canadian base there. This is puzzling to his parents but they accept this aberration and assume when he gets back life will return to its pre-ordained path. Not so. Each has to face a test that will force them to re-examine their lives. I was intrigued with the characters and had to read on to see how they did with their challenges. The author gave only glimpses into how things could evolve but such enticing glimpses that after I finished the book I thought about how the characters would have carried on.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very fast read, but a very frustrating one. The PTSD-due-to-Afghanistan plot is easily the most interesting thing on offer...so much so that I became irrtated having to branch off to the other two, less interesting plot lines. While the characters all rang true, only Kyle's story had me completely gripped. On top of this, the open-ended conclusion to the family sitatuion is just a bit too open-ended for my taste. Sometimes I can end a novel absolutely delirious with the feeling of "you can't stop now!" However, on this occasion, it's more a feeling of "that's it?" I'm ambigous about this novel, to say the least.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, watching paint dry would be better than this doozer of a snoozer! I didn't like any of the main characters and found I got angry at how stupid they were. It was like a Will Farrell movie trying to be deep. Slapstick comedy trying to be intellectual. Zero sympathy for any of them.

This book was caca in my opinion.

[Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the writing style but the story line was really quite sad and I found that I couldn't connect with any of the characters which is important to me in a novel.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trevor Cole is a fantastic, funny writer. As the back jacket cover says "brilliant comic tragedy".

[Claudette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another very quirky novel by Trevor Cole. He has a wonderful way of building suspense and intrique in the story and a very concise way with words.

[Paula · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't finish the book.