Derek McCormac’s bleak vision of rural life in some past Peterborough seems almost whimsical until the crow-bar comes into the picture. This novel in stories pours a gay coming-of-age tale into a beaker full of testosterone; the resulting experiment is a frothing first-person narrative of country fairs, saw-dust taverns, quack doctors, summer jobs and manly uncles all juxtaposed with the narrator’s beguiling lustful confusion. Whether the narrator is having a crow-bar shoved up his ass by some good-ol-boys or pasting sequins onto a shirt to wear to an aborted Hank William’s gig, the sense of the inescapable small-town Ontario summer pervades. This book is like the electric shocks the doctor in Dark Rides uses to ‘cure’ his patient: the pain only lasts a few seconds, but the smell of seared adolescent dignity lingers a life-time. A masterful debut.
Derek McCormac / Gutter Press (109 ManningAve., Toronto, ON M6J 2K6) / $12.95