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Mean Boy
Earnest, small-town Lawrence Campbell is fascinated by his poetry professor, the charismatic and uncompromising Jim Arsenault. Larry is determined to escape a life of thrifty drudgery and intellectual poverty working for his parents' motel and mini-golf business on Prince Edward Island. Jim appears to the young poet as a beacon of authenticity - mercurial, endlessly creative, fearless in his confrontations with the forces of conformity. And he drinks a lot.
Jim's magnetic personality soon draws Larry's entire poetry composition class into his orbit. Among the other literary acolytes are Sherrie Mitten, with her ringletted blonde hair and guileless blue eyes, the turtlenecked, urbane Claude who writes villanelles, and the champion of rhyming couplets about the heroic struggles of the Maritime proletariat, Todd. Casting a huge shadow over the group is the varsity football player and recreational drug user Chuck Slaughter - titanically strong, capriciously violent, hilariously indifferent to the charms of the poetic life - who has nearly given up terrifying Larry in order to pursue an awkward romantic interest in Sherrie.
Drawn by ambition and fascination, the group assembles itself fawningly around Jim, tagging along to bars, showing up at readings, thrilled to be invited to Jim's home, a shambling farmhouse in the woods where he lives with Moira, his shrewish backwoods muse. Lost in adulation, Larry is so delighted to be singled out for Jim's attention that he does not pause to wonder what Jim expects from his increasingly close relationship with the young poet.
Closely observed and deeply funny, Mean Boy tells the story of Larry's year-long battle against the indiscriminate use of quotation marks in advertising and his disillusionment as his narcissistic, hard-drinking idol spins out of control and threatens to take the young man's cherished notions about art and poetry down with him. Mean Boy is Lynn Coady's most polished and ambitious work to date.
Jim's magnetic personality soon draws Larry's entire poetry composition class into his orbit. Among the other literary acolytes are Sherrie Mitten, with her ringletted blonde hair and guileless blue eyes, the turtlenecked, urbane Claude who writes villanelles, and the champion of rhyming couplets about the heroic struggles of the Maritime proletariat, Todd. Casting a huge shadow over the group is the varsity football player and recreational drug user Chuck Slaughter - titanically strong, capriciously violent, hilariously indifferent to the charms of the poetic life - who has nearly given up terrifying Larry in order to pursue an awkward romantic interest in Sherrie.
Drawn by ambition and fascination, the group assembles itself fawningly around Jim, tagging along to bars, showing up at readings, thrilled to be invited to Jim's home, a shambling farmhouse in the woods where he lives with Moira, his shrewish backwoods muse. Lost in adulation, Larry is so delighted to be singled out for Jim's attention that he does not pause to wonder what Jim expects from his increasingly close relationship with the young poet.
Closely observed and deeply funny, Mean Boy tells the story of Larry's year-long battle against the indiscriminate use of quotation marks in advertising and his disillusionment as his narcissistic, hard-drinking idol spins out of control and threatens to take the young man's cherished notions about art and poetry down with him. Mean Boy is Lynn Coady's most polished and ambitious work to date.
400 pages, Paperback
First published February 21, 2006
4 people are currently reading
348 people want to read
About the author
Lynn Coady
25 books178 followersLynn Coady is an award-winning author, editor, and journalist. Her previous novels include Saints of Big Harbour, which was a national bestseller and a Globe and Mail Top 100 book, and Mean Boy, a Globe and Mail Top 100 book. Her popular advice column, Group Therapy, runs weekly in the Globe and Mail. Coady is originally from Cape Breton Island, NS, and is now living in Edmonton, Alberta.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
July 19, 2012
Normally, a book about a charismatic professor/alcoholic who, through the force of his Stellar Personality, figuratively (and, quite literally, literally) seduces his impressionable students, isn't my cup of tea. Perhaps I know too many professors to truly enjoy or even believe the sexual predations of the academics occupying White Noise and the Wonder Boys. The milieu is old-school, pre-sexual harassment days. Not quite Mad Men, but close enough. White men behaving badly when they should and do know better.
Mean Boy, by Lynn Coady, is a refreshingly different take on the trope. By turns funny and sharp (and often both), Coady deftly outlines the yearnings and fragile egos of budding poets and the twisted, self-mutilating madness of first academic crush. She doesn't belittle the students; she doesn't glorify the prof. Or perhaps there is a little of both. The characters are crisp, believable, and knowable. The ending was a surprise: it didn't pull its considerable punch, and gave heft to an extraordinary character.
Will read more by this author.
Mean Boy, by Lynn Coady, is a refreshingly different take on the trope. By turns funny and sharp (and often both), Coady deftly outlines the yearnings and fragile egos of budding poets and the twisted, self-mutilating madness of first academic crush. She doesn't belittle the students; she doesn't glorify the prof. Or perhaps there is a little of both. The characters are crisp, believable, and knowable. The ending was a surprise: it didn't pull its considerable punch, and gave heft to an extraordinary character.
Will read more by this author.
October 1, 2021
This was really fun and smart and funny. I love Lynn Coady.
September 7, 2011
Mean Boy is a brilliant spoof on creative writing schools and the remarkable life of a poet. I thought the author's characters were dead on, and she doesn't include an easy plot resolution. Her books are appealing, and yet impulsive. I did think that there was a sort of bogus resolution where she could have ended the book. The real ending felt anticlimactic, and like an attempt to finish on a note of seriousness, rather than wittiness. But the humor in the novel is so distorted by the sympathy and anxiety I felt for the main character and because of that I would have chosen the bogus ending to the real one.
3 Stars
3 Stars
May 24, 2021
It's hard to do comedy with heart and perhaps even harder to do it with brains, but Coady pulls off both in this always engaging, sometimes painful, oddly hopeful, and never cliched coming-of-age novel about a budding poet studying creative writing with a charismatic but troubled writer at a small maritime university.
September 16, 2008
Nineteen-year-old aspiring poet Larry Campbell has come to Woodcock University, where he now wishes to be called Lawrence, to become a poet under the tutelage of his hero, poet Jim Arsenault.
This is the funniest Canadian novel I've read in some time. Coady's evocation of the artist as a young man is pitch perfect: his need for approval, his naïveté, his grandiose dreaming. She fleshes out the novel with a cast of memorable characters, whose interactions are wonderfully comic.
Towards the end, the novel falters. The humour begins to disappear, which could well be deliberate, but more importantly, there is a sense that Coady is finding ways to spin out the story, to build false suspense by holding back what the narrator knows.
Nevertheless, well worth reading.
This is the funniest Canadian novel I've read in some time. Coady's evocation of the artist as a young man is pitch perfect: his need for approval, his naïveté, his grandiose dreaming. She fleshes out the novel with a cast of memorable characters, whose interactions are wonderfully comic.
Towards the end, the novel falters. The humour begins to disappear, which could well be deliberate, but more importantly, there is a sense that Coady is finding ways to spin out the story, to build false suspense by holding back what the narrator knows.
Nevertheless, well worth reading.
June 1, 2015
Mean Boy has its moments but never really took off for me. I almost stopped reading around page 100, but was just interested enough to keep going and finally finish it. But the story never realy goes anywhere and it ends with a whimper. There wasn't really an ending in my opinion. It was like she just didn't have any more ideas so stopped in mid-story. Nothing gets resolved, there was no real climax, nothing that really indicates an ending. Life goes on I guess. I was just left wondering what the heck I was supposed to take away from this book. Poetry is hard, I guess. Or maybe the life of a poet is hard. Or maybe nobody understands poets? Who knows? I won't be pondering this one for long. A pretty disappointing read.
April 19, 2015
I enjoyed reading this book. At first I thought it was because it is very thinly veiled a book written with Mount Allison University as its location. But it is not just how accurate a picture of small town liberal arts schools this book draws or the mixed boiler of emotions that comes from being at university with rural routes yourself. This book paints some very poignant metaphors and while the editing of the transcript was at times shoddy and I think the final poem was superfluous I did enjoy reading it and I think it enriched and helped me understand my own experiences at "Westcock"
March 12, 2021
This story written about university life in the mid 70s in eastern Canada, specifically New Brunswick ( and not so loosely veiled as Mount Allison), reverberates with aching honesty. It’s about poetry and ‘literature’ and wanting to ‘get out’ and hero worship and all the intertwining pieces of first year university at 18. And figuring out how to get to Oxford, how to dismiss Summerside as a treacly home base and mostly about figuring out who you are, in your final years as a teenager. I loved it.
May 5, 2007
Great Can Lit - loved that this book was set in my home province, on a university campus that is but isn't one I'm familiar with. Funny, smart, and so appropriate for someone who took creative writing from a published but bitter Lit prof.
November 15, 2008
Just finished this hilarious yet depressing book. It is destined to be a classic. Great characters and fantastic story line. Set in a maritime Canadian college town. Kids reminded me of my friends and professors reminded me of my professors. Very colloquial, humorous style.
August 17, 2009
This is a well-written story about Lawrence Campbell – a boy from small town PEI who travels to a New Brunswick university to study poetry with his hero who turns out to be a big jerk. The book was actually quite boring.
November 24, 2009
Found book hard to get into. Maybe I just did not persevere long enough??? But there so many books I want to read to waste my time struggling with this one. May try it again at a later date.
January 17, 2010
I enjoyed this right up to the last page. I had to check to see if pages were missing, so the 3 stars is solely because of my disappointment in the ending.
June 18, 2011
A good read, but one of those where you keep waiting for something to happen...
September 26, 2016
I had to quit this one. I really didn't find it engaging. It just kept going on and on, about the disfunction of the prof. I'm not a fan.
May 27, 2014
Terrific and very funny tale that has the reader harkening back to her own university days.
October 19, 2021
Mean Boy had been on my shelf for years, but I dove into it not actually realizing it takes place at a thinly (very thinly) veiled version of Mount Allison University and Sackville, NB, where I earned my undergrad 10ish years back. This made it all the more funny and endearing; I don't think I'd have enjoyed it nearly as much if I wasn't so familiar with the scenes of the musty fourth-floor English Department, the mid-campus swan pond, and so forth. About Lawrence's amusing grandiosity and naïveté and insecurity, I could see it reflecting in my student self all too easily. All this to say, I read the book in (give or take) two all-night reading marathons and had no regrets.
The character of Schofield turned out weirdly to be my fav. Partly because I automatically pictured him being "played" by John Goodman, which was very fun. But also because of his rejection of cynicism, and his self-consciousness about his rejection of it and of the way his emotionality informs his poetry. (I didn't find him funny. Was I supposed to?) He just struck me as an enormously generous character who balanced out not only the farce of Jim Arsenault, but also the uproarious efforts at feminism represented by Janet, and the bit characters of Lawrence's fellow poetry students.
As some have observed, the ending fell a bit flat for me initially too. But when I let it sink in for a day or so, I realized how skillful an arc Coady has drawn from the opening scenes of the book—Lawrence, simultaneously fawning and squirming, in Arsenault's office; by his typewriter in the sun, burning with his obsessive daydreams of becoming a great poet—to the final scene, with Lawrence having gotten what he really wanted, becoming part of Arsenault's trusted inner circle, and realizing what a desolate and un-special place that is to be, still alone and struggling to build up the fire in the freezing hangover morning kitchen, with a dead dog somewhere in the woods beyond. After following Lawrence all this way, we want something more solid, of course, yet the poetics of it all (alas) are perfect.
The character of Schofield turned out weirdly to be my fav. Partly because I automatically pictured him being "played" by John Goodman, which was very fun. But also because of his rejection of cynicism, and his self-consciousness about his rejection of it and of the way his emotionality informs his poetry. (I didn't find him funny. Was I supposed to?) He just struck me as an enormously generous character who balanced out not only the farce of Jim Arsenault, but also the uproarious efforts at feminism represented by Janet, and the bit characters of Lawrence's fellow poetry students.
As some have observed, the ending fell a bit flat for me initially too. But when I let it sink in for a day or so, I realized how skillful an arc Coady has drawn from the opening scenes of the book—Lawrence, simultaneously fawning and squirming, in Arsenault's office; by his typewriter in the sun, burning with his obsessive daydreams of becoming a great poet—to the final scene, with Lawrence having gotten what he really wanted, becoming part of Arsenault's trusted inner circle, and realizing what a desolate and un-special place that is to be, still alone and struggling to build up the fire in the freezing hangover morning kitchen, with a dead dog somewhere in the woods beyond. After following Lawrence all this way, we want something more solid, of course, yet the poetics of it all (alas) are perfect.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
August 6, 2014from Chapter 2: It's not healthy to be dwelling on that sort of thing
The visiting poet is about to begin his reading and he recites like he's performing, telling a story. It is magnificent:
"And then Schofield raised his head, eyes open, looked directly out at us, and recited his poetry for twenty minutes. It was like he was possessed by gods. Or demons. It was wonderful. It was riveting. He started with the man-word/woman-word poem. He did not consult the twisted sheaf of paper in his right hand at any time during the recitation, although he did pause to shuffle the pages, for some reason, between each poem. He ~performed~ the poems, giving them exactly the right cadence, emphasizing precisely the words and phrases he wanted us to most notice. His reading voice was nothing like his speaking voice. It was an actor's voice, and not the least bit reedy. He was a muted, less stagey Gregory Peck."
At times, I hated it; at times, I loved it. At times, it frustrated me. But it's good, and painful and reminds me of my wasted youth, and points fingers at me, and tells me to get up and write.
Canadian Literature review by Gisele Baxter:
"Lynn Coady's fourth novel, Mean Boy, is set in a small New Brunswick university town, over the 1975-76 academic year. Its narrator, 19-year-old Larry Campbell, came here to escape a small town on Prince Edward Island, and to pursue the art of poetry with his hero, the rambunctiously singular Jim Arsenault, who teaches writing in the English Department. Despite his ritualistic bouts with the typewriter, Larry knows very little about life, or poetry for that matter, and is detached and bluntly judgemental. Consequently, the novel at first seems populated by clichés: the sexy blue-eyed curly-haired blonde Sherrie, the big dumb football player Chuck Slaughter, the turtlenecked artiste Claude, the enthusiastic working-class bard Todd Smiley; waitresses and secretaries are busty and blowsy, the faculty besides the vigorous backwoods-dwelling Jim are tweedy and dull. Yet Larry dreads becoming a cliché himself: the naïve hick.
Through its clever episodic narrative structure and precisely, unsentimentally observed detail, this novel skillfully avoids calcifying to fit a generic slot (the academic satire, the regional Gothic, the period piece, the portrait of the artist as a young man), even while it flirts with all of these genres. Mean Boy is not a 30-years-hence memory piece, framed as the reminiscences of a mature man whose fate we know. Instead, it has the immediacy of recollection not long after the fact, but after some stepping stone to greater perception has been negotiated. Events are described in the moment; “Memory delayed doesn't make memory better” (374). No huge revelations arrive: we never fully learn why Jim drinks so much, what (or who) Sherrie really wants, whether Claude is gay, what exactly happens between Larry and Janet. Smaller, more crucial lessons are learned: hero worship can provide dangerous weapons to the needy god, mentors can be found in unexpected people, childhood memories reverberate in adult nightmares, betrayal can be felt and revenge motivated in many ways. This is a novel of discoveries recorded as grace notes that redefine each character, bringing them fully to life: Sherrie suddenly turning ugly in unleashing her capacity for anger and passion, Bryant Dekker admitting he changed his given name Obed for something more Byronic, the memory of Larry's father's kindness in letting hippies camp on his land, the inspiring performance of Dermot Schofield's poems in front of a small audience on a stormy night, even Grandma Lydia's expletive. Questions arise, concerning poetry but also concerning relationships, aspirations, sexuality; they are left unresolved, as they should be: this is ultimately a novel of latency. We do not know if Larry will become a poet, but we realize he has the capacity, in his own attention to detail (the gesture of a squirrel, the shape of a chair, the texture of a sweater, the quality of sunlight through a window, the imagery of a nightmare), his love of the almost tactile quality of words, in speech, as formations on paper, and in his growing accumulation of experience and developing realization that other people are not always what they seem.
Lynn Coady ends the novel with a poem, printed as if produced on an old manual typewriter. It is tempting to think Jim wrote this poem when Larry let him sleep off a hangover in his apartment. I like to think this is Larry's poem, using the anecdote about the squirrel invasion he tells early on to figure his perception of Jim, who is also alluring through the glass, destructive once inside.
Mean Boy is confident, funny, and deeply moving. It is also remarkably accurate. Lynn Coady probably started grade school in 1975; I started university the following year (in Nova Scotia). I am not quite sure why she chose this period, though it is a point before the evolution toward contemporary academia experienced its greatest seismic shifts. It is a point before poetry slams, as well as online discussion groups and social networking sites, allowed aspiring writers ways to experience and produce poetry outside academia. Once or twice I wondered if an expression had actually been current then, and even aspiring poets seemed more engaged by the outside world (and more conscious of no longer living in the 1960s) than this group (though there are hints via Claude of the opportunities of greater awareness through travel). However, the Stanfield's undershirts and the parkas, the love of strong tea, the still mostly male (and mostly British and American) faculty, the cubed cheese on toothpicks and plastic wineglasses, the encroachment of feminism, the odd sense of for the first time being in a world of adults unlike your family, outside your family: those things she captures, and some of them endure."
The visiting poet is about to begin his reading and he recites like he's performing, telling a story. It is magnificent:
"And then Schofield raised his head, eyes open, looked directly out at us, and recited his poetry for twenty minutes. It was like he was possessed by gods. Or demons. It was wonderful. It was riveting. He started with the man-word/woman-word poem. He did not consult the twisted sheaf of paper in his right hand at any time during the recitation, although he did pause to shuffle the pages, for some reason, between each poem. He ~performed~ the poems, giving them exactly the right cadence, emphasizing precisely the words and phrases he wanted us to most notice. His reading voice was nothing like his speaking voice. It was an actor's voice, and not the least bit reedy. He was a muted, less stagey Gregory Peck."
At times, I hated it; at times, I loved it. At times, it frustrated me. But it's good, and painful and reminds me of my wasted youth, and points fingers at me, and tells me to get up and write.
Canadian Literature review by Gisele Baxter:
"Lynn Coady's fourth novel, Mean Boy, is set in a small New Brunswick university town, over the 1975-76 academic year. Its narrator, 19-year-old Larry Campbell, came here to escape a small town on Prince Edward Island, and to pursue the art of poetry with his hero, the rambunctiously singular Jim Arsenault, who teaches writing in the English Department. Despite his ritualistic bouts with the typewriter, Larry knows very little about life, or poetry for that matter, and is detached and bluntly judgemental. Consequently, the novel at first seems populated by clichés: the sexy blue-eyed curly-haired blonde Sherrie, the big dumb football player Chuck Slaughter, the turtlenecked artiste Claude, the enthusiastic working-class bard Todd Smiley; waitresses and secretaries are busty and blowsy, the faculty besides the vigorous backwoods-dwelling Jim are tweedy and dull. Yet Larry dreads becoming a cliché himself: the naïve hick.
Through its clever episodic narrative structure and precisely, unsentimentally observed detail, this novel skillfully avoids calcifying to fit a generic slot (the academic satire, the regional Gothic, the period piece, the portrait of the artist as a young man), even while it flirts with all of these genres. Mean Boy is not a 30-years-hence memory piece, framed as the reminiscences of a mature man whose fate we know. Instead, it has the immediacy of recollection not long after the fact, but after some stepping stone to greater perception has been negotiated. Events are described in the moment; “Memory delayed doesn't make memory better” (374). No huge revelations arrive: we never fully learn why Jim drinks so much, what (or who) Sherrie really wants, whether Claude is gay, what exactly happens between Larry and Janet. Smaller, more crucial lessons are learned: hero worship can provide dangerous weapons to the needy god, mentors can be found in unexpected people, childhood memories reverberate in adult nightmares, betrayal can be felt and revenge motivated in many ways. This is a novel of discoveries recorded as grace notes that redefine each character, bringing them fully to life: Sherrie suddenly turning ugly in unleashing her capacity for anger and passion, Bryant Dekker admitting he changed his given name Obed for something more Byronic, the memory of Larry's father's kindness in letting hippies camp on his land, the inspiring performance of Dermot Schofield's poems in front of a small audience on a stormy night, even Grandma Lydia's expletive. Questions arise, concerning poetry but also concerning relationships, aspirations, sexuality; they are left unresolved, as they should be: this is ultimately a novel of latency. We do not know if Larry will become a poet, but we realize he has the capacity, in his own attention to detail (the gesture of a squirrel, the shape of a chair, the texture of a sweater, the quality of sunlight through a window, the imagery of a nightmare), his love of the almost tactile quality of words, in speech, as formations on paper, and in his growing accumulation of experience and developing realization that other people are not always what they seem.
Lynn Coady ends the novel with a poem, printed as if produced on an old manual typewriter. It is tempting to think Jim wrote this poem when Larry let him sleep off a hangover in his apartment. I like to think this is Larry's poem, using the anecdote about the squirrel invasion he tells early on to figure his perception of Jim, who is also alluring through the glass, destructive once inside.
Mean Boy is confident, funny, and deeply moving. It is also remarkably accurate. Lynn Coady probably started grade school in 1975; I started university the following year (in Nova Scotia). I am not quite sure why she chose this period, though it is a point before the evolution toward contemporary academia experienced its greatest seismic shifts. It is a point before poetry slams, as well as online discussion groups and social networking sites, allowed aspiring writers ways to experience and produce poetry outside academia. Once or twice I wondered if an expression had actually been current then, and even aspiring poets seemed more engaged by the outside world (and more conscious of no longer living in the 1960s) than this group (though there are hints via Claude of the opportunities of greater awareness through travel). However, the Stanfield's undershirts and the parkas, the love of strong tea, the still mostly male (and mostly British and American) faculty, the cubed cheese on toothpicks and plastic wineglasses, the encroachment of feminism, the odd sense of for the first time being in a world of adults unlike your family, outside your family: those things she captures, and some of them endure."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 28, 2024
CW: manipulation, alcoholism, sexism
This campus novel may be set in the 1970s but as a former CanLit scholar it pushed all of my buttons and forced me to relive some of the less glamorous parts of being a student in a small and sometime confused and claustrophobic field. This novel is ostensibly set in a lightly camouflaged Mount Allison and gestures toward real places and real people. It captures well the smallness, intensity, and fervour of young scholarship. Unhealthy relations with alcoholic teachers you are trying to impress and befriend and learn from and also maybe use for career advancement are jumbled up just so in this text. It’s well done, but I m left wondering who this Mean Boy is. Aren’t we all? Isn’t that what CanLit makes us into to some extent?
The side plot with the cousin was a total surprise and well done. I also really liked what she did with Slaughter and with the first visiting scholar from Trent. It was all clever and felt very genuine.
This campus novel may be set in the 1970s but as a former CanLit scholar it pushed all of my buttons and forced me to relive some of the less glamorous parts of being a student in a small and sometime confused and claustrophobic field. This novel is ostensibly set in a lightly camouflaged Mount Allison and gestures toward real places and real people. It captures well the smallness, intensity, and fervour of young scholarship. Unhealthy relations with alcoholic teachers you are trying to impress and befriend and learn from and also maybe use for career advancement are jumbled up just so in this text. It’s well done, but I m left wondering who this Mean Boy is. Aren’t we all? Isn’t that what CanLit makes us into to some extent?
The side plot with the cousin was a total surprise and well done. I also really liked what she did with Slaughter and with the first visiting scholar from Trent. It was all clever and felt very genuine.
January 10, 2022
This is a book that is both funny and alarming. It pulls back the curtain on the academic landscape of a small liberal-arts college in eastern Canada, and points out the foibles that exist in this setting, as it would in any workplace or situati0n. Lynn Coady's writing is refreshing through its irreverence, and her willingness to reveal the ever-present dark side.
October 9, 2024
this book was SO BORING. what was the plot? how did we not manage to get past christmas in this kids first year of university in 400 pages? this book just droned on and on about the prof and his problems. the ending was awful. if i could give 0 stars i would.
July 3, 2017
The writing is loose and easy. I LOVED this book.
December 27, 2018
3.5 technically
February 6, 2020
4.25. Excellent humour and wit. Loved Charles Slaughter and Moira.
April 18, 2020
Ooooh, I forgot how much I loved this book. I forgot how long it had been since I read it - I think since 2008 or 2009? Wild.
This was the first book I ever read by Lynn Coady, which I was assigned in a Canadian Lit class for my undergrad at Mount Allison University - the school that Westcock University is based off of. I admit that part of my enjoyment is very much because of the places and details that I recognised while reading: the specific vibe of the English Department, Mel's Tearoom (Carl's in the book), the waterfowl park, etc. It was a big bonus for me and rereading brought back a lot of nostalgia.
But aside from this, it was a great reminder of the main reason I love Lynn Coady: she writes absolutely fantastic characters, characters that feel like real people, and their behaviour is completely natural and doesn't feel forced. Larry is SUCH a believable 19 year old. He is filled with such black and white, absolutist type of thinking - either he is a genius poet or he is the dumbest kid in the world with no potential. He can't think of himself anywhere in the middle. And his opinions of others are very much this way at the beginning of the book, but he grows up a lot and starts to see people as multifaceted with their complicated motivations and perspectives. His view of Jim, this godlike creature in his eyes, in particular becomes much more nuanced as he sees Jim's insecurities, issues, and hypocrisy become more and more pronounced.
I thought Larry's perspective was slightly heavy handed in his obsession with masculinity - lots of descriptions such as "mannish hands" "like a man," the comments about how giant Chuck Slaughter is, this idea of Jim as ultra masculine even though back home everyone thinks poetry is "faggy," (their words not mine!) etc. At one point Larry consciously decides not to express his dissenting opinion because he doesn't want to disagree with a male peer, and on another occasion does not express agreeing with a female peer, fearful of how it would look for him to do so. I just thought it came up A LOT in an unmasked way and could have used a bit of subtlety.
I generally don't like the "sort of incompetent but genius alcoholic professor" story line, and occasionally I did think Jim was a bit of a shit, but overall I agree with other reviews that say Coady handles this kind of plot with a refreshing lens. Again, her strength is in making these characters real people, and somehow she has made Jim behave both as a caricature and as a totally understandable real life human. I hate Jim, but I only hate him because she wrote him so damn well.
One for the faves, probably a 4.5 for me, but rounding up because I just freaking loved it. That social commentary on Maritime Canada in particular was hilarious and on point!!!
This was the first book I ever read by Lynn Coady, which I was assigned in a Canadian Lit class for my undergrad at Mount Allison University - the school that Westcock University is based off of. I admit that part of my enjoyment is very much because of the places and details that I recognised while reading: the specific vibe of the English Department, Mel's Tearoom (Carl's in the book), the waterfowl park, etc. It was a big bonus for me and rereading brought back a lot of nostalgia.
But aside from this, it was a great reminder of the main reason I love Lynn Coady: she writes absolutely fantastic characters, characters that feel like real people, and their behaviour is completely natural and doesn't feel forced. Larry is SUCH a believable 19 year old. He is filled with such black and white, absolutist type of thinking - either he is a genius poet or he is the dumbest kid in the world with no potential. He can't think of himself anywhere in the middle. And his opinions of others are very much this way at the beginning of the book, but he grows up a lot and starts to see people as multifaceted with their complicated motivations and perspectives. His view of Jim, this godlike creature in his eyes, in particular becomes much more nuanced as he sees Jim's insecurities, issues, and hypocrisy become more and more pronounced.
I thought Larry's perspective was slightly heavy handed in his obsession with masculinity - lots of descriptions such as "mannish hands" "like a man," the comments about how giant Chuck Slaughter is, this idea of Jim as ultra masculine even though back home everyone thinks poetry is "faggy," (their words not mine!) etc. At one point Larry consciously decides not to express his dissenting opinion because he doesn't want to disagree with a male peer, and on another occasion does not express agreeing with a female peer, fearful of how it would look for him to do so. I just thought it came up A LOT in an unmasked way and could have used a bit of subtlety.
I generally don't like the "sort of incompetent but genius alcoholic professor" story line, and occasionally I did think Jim was a bit of a shit, but overall I agree with other reviews that say Coady handles this kind of plot with a refreshing lens. Again, her strength is in making these characters real people, and somehow she has made Jim behave both as a caricature and as a totally understandable real life human. I hate Jim, but I only hate him because she wrote him so damn well.
One for the faves, probably a 4.5 for me, but rounding up because I just freaking loved it. That social commentary on Maritime Canada in particular was hilarious and on point!!!
September 15, 2014
2.5 STARS
"Earnest, small-town Lawrence Campbell is fascinated by his poetry professor, the charismatic and uncompromising Jim Arsenault. Larry is determined to escape a life of thrifty drudgery and intellectual poverty working for his parents' motel and mini-golf business on Prince Edward Island. Jim appears to the young poet as a beacon of authenticity - mercurial, endlessly creative, fearless in his confrontations with the forces of conformity. And he drinks a lot.
Jim's magnetic personality soon draws Larry's entire poetry composition class into his orbit. Among the other literary acolytes are Sherrie Mitten, with her ringletted blonde hair and guileless blue eyes, the turtlenecked, urbane Claude who writes villanelles, and the champion of rhyming couplets about the heroic struggles of the Maritime proletariat, Todd. Casting a huge shadow over the group is the varsity football player and recreational drug user Chuck Slaughter - titanically strong, capriciously violent, hilariously indifferent to the charms of the poetic life - who has nearly given up terrifying Larry in order to pursue an awkward romantic interest in Sherrie.
Drawn by ambition and fascination, the group assembles itself fawningly around Jim, tagging along to bars, showing up at readings, thrilled to be invited to Jim's home, a shambling farmhouse in the woods where he lives with Moira, his shrewish backwoods muse. Lost in adulation, Larry is so delighted to be singled out for Jim's attention that he does not pause to wonder what Jim expects from his increasingly close relationship with the young poet." (From Amazon)
I loved the Saints of Big Harbour but I found this novel blah. I was not interested in the story or characters.
"Earnest, small-town Lawrence Campbell is fascinated by his poetry professor, the charismatic and uncompromising Jim Arsenault. Larry is determined to escape a life of thrifty drudgery and intellectual poverty working for his parents' motel and mini-golf business on Prince Edward Island. Jim appears to the young poet as a beacon of authenticity - mercurial, endlessly creative, fearless in his confrontations with the forces of conformity. And he drinks a lot.
Jim's magnetic personality soon draws Larry's entire poetry composition class into his orbit. Among the other literary acolytes are Sherrie Mitten, with her ringletted blonde hair and guileless blue eyes, the turtlenecked, urbane Claude who writes villanelles, and the champion of rhyming couplets about the heroic struggles of the Maritime proletariat, Todd. Casting a huge shadow over the group is the varsity football player and recreational drug user Chuck Slaughter - titanically strong, capriciously violent, hilariously indifferent to the charms of the poetic life - who has nearly given up terrifying Larry in order to pursue an awkward romantic interest in Sherrie.
Drawn by ambition and fascination, the group assembles itself fawningly around Jim, tagging along to bars, showing up at readings, thrilled to be invited to Jim's home, a shambling farmhouse in the woods where he lives with Moira, his shrewish backwoods muse. Lost in adulation, Larry is so delighted to be singled out for Jim's attention that he does not pause to wonder what Jim expects from his increasingly close relationship with the young poet." (From Amazon)
I loved the Saints of Big Harbour but I found this novel blah. I was not interested in the story or characters.
February 23, 2013
I read this for independent reading where we are supposed to read four books with one authored by a Canadian. When I saw this in our school library, and seeing how comparatively thin it is compared to several others which are either fantasy or sci-fi or whatever, I checked it out right away.
At first, I was wondering if this is Jim Arsenault's biography as told by his student, who just happened to be the main character of the story, Lawrence "Larry" Campbell. But as I progressed through the novel (not as quickly as I used to), I found Larry's puppy-like idolization towards Jim quite endearing. The supporting characters, Sherrie, Todd, Claude, Slaughter, and Dekker, fit their roles appropriately although the lack of character development in this story is quite off-putting. The back and forth between Larry and everybody, especially his parents is pretty funny because of its realism and the pace of story, despite being choppy at times, is easy to follow.
The reason for the three stars however is because of the rather anticlimactic ending. I'm not expecting Larry to suddenly become this literary mogul, Slaughter and Sherrie getting married, Jim 'heading straight for the English stairwell' because Moira finally left him, or even Claude coming out of the closet, which is the very probable notion out of the four, to be honest. Alas, the ending was cut short and abrupt and posed as underwhelming in my mind.
Overall, it was a good read, a little mundane though with a 'splish-splash' of colour every now and then. Definitely worth a second read... After I retire probably.
At first, I was wondering if this is Jim Arsenault's biography as told by his student, who just happened to be the main character of the story, Lawrence "Larry" Campbell. But as I progressed through the novel (not as quickly as I used to), I found Larry's puppy-like idolization towards Jim quite endearing. The supporting characters, Sherrie, Todd, Claude, Slaughter, and Dekker, fit their roles appropriately although the lack of character development in this story is quite off-putting. The back and forth between Larry and everybody, especially his parents is pretty funny because of its realism and the pace of story, despite being choppy at times, is easy to follow.
The reason for the three stars however is because of the rather anticlimactic ending. I'm not expecting Larry to suddenly become this literary mogul, Slaughter and Sherrie getting married, Jim 'heading straight for the English stairwell' because Moira finally left him, or even Claude coming out of the closet, which is the very probable notion out of the four, to be honest. Alas, the ending was cut short and abrupt and posed as underwhelming in my mind.
Overall, it was a good read, a little mundane though with a 'splish-splash' of colour every now and then. Definitely worth a second read... After I retire probably.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 1, 2012
This book was so funny, then it turned rather serious toward the end. That didn't take away it's greatness, but did sort of turn my would-be 4 stars into 3. I was laughing out loud until about page 300, then suddenly all of the realities of the book (and potentially there is some mental illness in there, not really sure what to make of Jim's issues) caught up with the loveable protagonist and it was kind of sad at the end.
I loved the sense of place in this story: University, English department, New Brunswick, PEI, the whole Other-ness of a University and all of the feigning intelligence set within a rural community. Okay, I live in New Brunswick and I am originally from "away" so I found this kind of endearing and funny because it's true- like Lawrence naming the cab-driver Friendly, and this actually happens in the community where I live.
The book is great fun, lots of people are comparing it to Wonder Boys in other reviews but I thought this was so much better, and took itself much less serious.
I loved the sense of place in this story: University, English department, New Brunswick, PEI, the whole Other-ness of a University and all of the feigning intelligence set within a rural community. Okay, I live in New Brunswick and I am originally from "away" so I found this kind of endearing and funny because it's true- like Lawrence naming the cab-driver Friendly, and this actually happens in the community where I live.
The book is great fun, lots of people are comparing it to Wonder Boys in other reviews but I thought this was so much better, and took itself much less serious.
October 4, 2012
This novel reminded me of the movie Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas. The English world, the big fuss getting that speaker reminded me of the big party at the was it chancellors? The weird student/teacher relationship. The disjointed thoughts and yet the feeling of flow. Just, so odd yet so well done!
I think that there needs to be no student/teacher relations. At all. lol. It's so easy to adore and idolize a prof. Especially when they are the best in their field. And there is just so much to go wrong! A falling out. A disagreement. An expectation that is not met. And the stack of cards comes tumbling down.
The other thing that bothers me is how Sherri says he never read her work. I never finished collage but it was totally teachers pet where I went. The more you sucked up the further ahead you got. And that didn't mean someone elses work was better. They just got graded better. Or given better opportunities. School can be such a corrupt place.
I think that there needs to be no student/teacher relations. At all. lol. It's so easy to adore and idolize a prof. Especially when they are the best in their field. And there is just so much to go wrong! A falling out. A disagreement. An expectation that is not met. And the stack of cards comes tumbling down.
The other thing that bothers me is how Sherri says he never read her work. I never finished collage but it was totally teachers pet where I went. The more you sucked up the further ahead you got. And that didn't mean someone elses work was better. They just got graded better. Or given better opportunities. School can be such a corrupt place.
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