I haven’t heard of this author before, but I like the “misadventure” on the cover…
I rarely talk about plot, because talking about plot is boring, but I guess I have to this time: I thought this would be a mystery, but instead it’s about a guy who kills a hustler (in self defence) and then decides to hack the body up for easy dispersal (instead of going to the police). That’s a quite well-used plot, but the story then either goes into gross/slapstick humour mode, or horror/thriller mode.
This one does neither — I mean, this is meant to be a humorous book, but it’s quite level headed. So what you end up with is a book about a stone cold fifty year old rather psycho gay lawyer who you’re supposed to identify with (and it’s written by a fifty year old gay lawyer, to boot), and it’s just kinda… eh?
But the main problem is the writing. The book is Canadian — and from 1981, so you wouldn’t think there’d problems much with vocabulary. I mean, I read books that are twice as old with some regularity… But, let’s take a paragraph almost at random:
I mean, sure, “aureole”. But “halo” would be more common. And… corfam? It’s not that this is much of a problem, but it’s rather unexpected. I don’t know whether this is because of the Canadianness of the book, or just because Phillips is an oddball, but…
Oh, “corfam” was out of date already when this book was written:
DuPont ended making Corfam in 1971, leaving it with only seven years of production.
WHAT?!
Oh, a Prince Albert is a type of coat…
Er… I don’t think anybody in 1980 was wearing a coat like this, really. The more I read, the more I think Phillips is just a font of malapropisms — he’s obviously trying to class up his writing, and is just overshooting badly, and landing in a Field Of Nonsense.
This was apparently Phillip’s first novel — at the age of 49, so perhaps he had a lot of vocabulary saved up for a rainy day, and now that it’s here, he’s gonna use it, by gum.
I kept reading in stupefied fascination. Much of the text is taken up by flashbacks to previous breakups and old marriages and stuff, and I wonder whether this was the impetus for the novel rather than then lacklustre dismemberment plot? It’s as if he thought those parts would be too boring to publish (extremely true), so he added some murders…
His first novel, Sunday’s Child, was published in 1981, and was shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award.
It had to have been a commercial success, too — there are three sequels. Man, people were starved for gay novels back then, eh? But here’s the most-liked review on Goodreads:
Indeed.
Sunday’s Child (1981) by Edward O. Phillips (buy new, buy used, 3.56 on Goodreads)