Baroque-A-Nova

by Kevin Chong

"Meet Saul St. Pierre, teenage son of the once famous St. Pierres, a forgotten seventies folk sensation enjoying a revival thanks to a German techno group's remake of their hit song "Bushmills Threnody." It's not the best week of Saul's life - he just learned that his long-absent mother has committed suicide fifteen time zones away. And because Helena St. Pierre's death occurs just as the St. Pierre's are experiencing a resurgence in popularity, Saul's town is flooded by journalists, film-makers, game-show hosts, and assorted oddballs fueled by the nostalgia boom - all hungry for a glimpse of tragic celebrity." It doesn't help matters that Saul's step-mother, Jana, the only reliable adult he's ever known, is dating a cop who wants to marry her. Saul's relationship with his girlfriend is on the fritz. Then there is the arrival of the two young women from New York who come to worship at the feet of his father, an alcohol-guzzling musical has-been. Saul and his friend Navi are suspended from school for staging a demonstration against censorship. And during all this, during the week leading up to his mother's funeral, Saul struggles to understand her reasons for taking her own life - and for abandoning him years before.

Genres: Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure what I should say about this book. First and foremost, I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. It's off-beat and the characters really aren't likable. However, there was something about the book that kept me reading.

The main character, Saul, is the child of the St. Pierres, a Canadian folk duo who were famous during the 60's-70's, but fell into relative obscurity after Helena, Saul's mother, walked off the stage one night and never came back. When the duo's most famous song, Bushmill's Threnody, resurfaces as a sample on a German rap group's popular song, the St. Pierres are once again thrust into the spotlight--a twist of fate that the fragile Helena, now living in Thailand and working at a mission, can't handle and it's not long before Saul learns of her suicide. Saul is a shiftless, smart ass teenager who has difficulty coming to terms with who his mother was and who his father really is.

The book has some funny moments, but it's not as humorous as I expected it to be. Also irritating is Saul's first person point of view that lapses into long-winded descriptions of people and everything else around him. It just seems inconsistent with his character, as it's presented in the opening chapters.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder

[Salena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't particularly like this book. At the beginning, the first-person descriptions Saul makes of himself seem out of place. And then, the whole book describes a few days in his life in really clear detail, each chapter named after the day of the week it takes place on. The last few pages vaguely tell the next several months of Saul's life, without it being the epilogue, just the next section in "Monday." That part seemed to me useless to the whole point of the story, a sort of excuse for the author to find a nice, clean ending for a book about teenage angst--which never has a nice clean ending.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 1 out of 5]

Saul is a troubled self-absorbed teenager, the son of Ian and Helena St. Pierre, who were once a folk singing duo popular in the sixties and seventies. The two broke up when Helena left to become a missionary in Thailand.

The couple’s best selling song has recently been recorded by a German group called Urethra Franklin, bringing the St. Pierres back into the public spotlight. Fans surround the St. Pierre’s suburban home, and things get worse when Saul’s mother, the long absent Helena, commits suicide.

Saul has a complex and troubled relationship with Ian, his booze loving father who has lived the life of a “has been” musician for years and currently lives with two young women. Saul loves his stepmother Jana, who met Saul’s father Ian when she was travelling with the band as a teenager.

This narrative is filled with problems. It is choppy and erratic, meandering with long passages of teenage angst. It seems impossible to have sympathy for any of the characters who are never fully developed. Even Saul appears to be a pompas jerk, who lacks even a modicum of self understanding.

The entire narrative drifts along page after page, with the reader neither engaged nor caring what happens to any of them.

A complete miss.

[Cindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

It took me about 4 months to read this book. Partly because I was busy, and partly because I couldn't get into it. I'd read about 2 pages and then put it down, 2 more pages, put it down. It started off ok, but then, I also had 2 hours of free time in a waiting room. If I had to sum it up in a word, i'd say it was mediocre. If I could pick two, I'd add rambling. It seemed all over the place with a lot of uninteresting and seemingly pointless dialogue. I dunno, if you can't finish this in one or two sittings, you probably won't...unless you force yourself like I did. Meh.

[Kassandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interestingly, the only character in this book I found compelling was the dead mother the narrator has never met. The rest of the characters are unlikable, dare I say, boring even though they're supposed to be offbeat. I did finish the book in one sitting, though there was nothing in particular I liked about it, but nothing in particular I thought was bad.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the way Kevin Chong writes. I feel the flow of his words resonate on a cellular level. I wonder if he wrote himself into the novel a la Douglas Coupland. I wonder if Chong is the writer Helena fell in love with.