Selected as the CBC Canada Reads Winner! “A dazzling display of fictional footwork The author has not written just another hockey novel;. Paul Quarrington’s novel, Galveston, was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; King Leary won the CBC’s Canada Reads competition and the. Editorial Reviews. From Publishers Weekly. Quarrington is the Canadian author of the King Leary – Kindle edition by Paul Quarrington. Download it once and.
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King Leary by Paul Quarrington. Now, in the South Lery Nursing Home, where he shares a room with Edmund “Blue” Hermann, the antagonistic and alcoholic reporter who once chronicled his career, Leary looks paup on his tumultuous life and times: Louis Whirlygig” to score the winning goal in the Stanley Cup final.
Now all but forgotten, Leary is only a legend in his own mind until a high-powered advertising agency decides to feature him in a series of ginger ale commercials. With his male nurse, his son, and the irrepressible Blue, Leary sets off for Toronto on one last adventure as he revisits the scenes of his glorious life as King of the Ice.
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King Leary by Paul Quarrington | : Books
Lists with This Book. Whenever I can’t sleep I often play a game. I go through the alphabet thinking of novelists I have read. Men first, then women and then, if it is a really bad night, children’s authors. Most letters i have no problem with but ‘Q’, now that is always a struggle.
So I hit upon a cunning plan. Going to the Cinema bookshop, an enormous, cavernous place with endless bookcases and shelves stretching over two floors I decided to find a couple of Q’s. Paul Quarrington, of whom I had never heard, was one and this was the book i bought.
But the mechanism for changing and challenging seems so unwieldy that i can’t be arsed. Now you know why I picked up the book you may be interested as to what it was like. That is what it is. It is funny and poignant and enraging and bizarre and unsettling and, most especially, Quarrington respects his readers.
By that i mean he does not spoon feed his story all the time, he demands that we listen and concentrate and think. He doesn’t signal every joke with huge unsubtle arrowing but will sometimes leave one ticking away in the narrative and it is only two or three pages later that the pay-off will explode in the paragraph and the cleverness of development becomes clear. The story is related by an old man living in residential care. He was a top ice hockey player and he tells, through flashback and encounters in his mind with long dead friends, his adventures and misadventures.
We see everything through his eyes and as the story develops he becomes, quite clearly, an unreliable narrator. Not so much because he is untruthful but because he is blind to aspects of life which did not fit in with his plan or understanding.
Gradually, more and more of the hinterland of the story is explored or, if you will, the pencil sketches he has drawn of others’ lives are gradually given shade and depth and perspective and this comes through encounters with his ‘fallen comrades’ arriving like Banquo’s ghost to chaallenge the equilibrium of his old age.
Quarrington has a lovely ability to describe the natural world Sometimes the canal would be whitecapped and rough, and I wouldn’t think the wind was up and blowing over a storm, I’d think the water was angry. In England, if something is excellent, someone might say ‘That is the dog’s bollocks’, Quarrington has his hero saying Its the puppy’s butt For some reason this, as they say, really tickled my fancy.
Anyway the book is a moving exploration of friendship and how this can blind us to truth, of ambition and how this can allow us to betray friendship and of how destructive our words can be. How their knock on effect can resound a long while after they have stopped being shouted or spoken or even whispered. Quarrington does all this without letting up on the humour. Gallows humour I suppose it could be called but it creates an atmosphere in the narrative which unnerves.
At the heart of the novel is the relationship of Leary, our narrator, and his two best friends, both now long dead. Gradually, piece by piece and detail by detail the true history of events unfolds.
From early on in the novel Quarrington unsettles his reader.
You know there is something lurking in the back story and as it dawns on you, you realize you knew pahl deep down all the time. His talent is that he makes us, his readers, discover this inevitable truth at the same time as Leary faces up to it. Its as if we are walking the journey with him. His unreliability as a narrator thus becomes the great strength of the novel.
Leary is not a liar but a coward. He has fought against facing life because in facing it there would be, and indeed are, too many questions crying out for answers. The ghosts which rock his security are not wraiths from beyond the grave but his leaey buried conscience.
This book is, to coin a phrase, ‘the puppy’s butt’. View all 4 comments. Oct 23, Bonnie rated it liked it Shelves: I am revising my review slightly, because when I last wrote, I was feeling “under the weather”. Although I grew up playing hockey, on frozen ponds, mainly, with the neighbourhood boysI have learyy really enjoyed watching, or reading, about the sport. This book is, of course, not necessarily for a Hockey fan.
To quote quarrinvton friend: So, in the end, I’d say, give it a “shot”! View all 5 comments. This book won Canada Reads inbut surprisingly it uqarrington not seem to be widely read. Alcoholism is also a recurring pqul. Mar 10, Pooker rated it it was amazing Shelves: Read in for Canada Reads, my review from January, Oh gosh, I am so glad I read this book.
Notwithstanding that I haven’t yet read the other Canada Reads candidates, I’m quite prepared to quartington King Leary should be “la premier etoile”! Percival “King” Leary is an old man read “one foot poised to kick it” and former hockey legend. As I was reading I did wonder for a while whether he really was a legend “in the books” or whether the highlight reels existed only in his own mind because Read in for Canada Reads, my review from January, As I was reading I did wonder for a while whether he really was a legend “in the books” or whether the highlight reels existed only in his own mind because Lary suspect that almost every Canadian male is or coulda been a hockey legend.
But it appears he really was “King of the Ice”. We find out that he has been trotted out and honoured at the Gardens more than once and he is in the Hall of Fame. Now, however, quarrinhton is confined to a nursing home reliving his glory days in his own mind and by spouting off to whomever will listen. Quarrihgton day though he is contacted by an ad agency who wants to feature King Leary in a ginger ale commercial and so we are quarrintgon to Toronto with the King and his wacky entourage his nurse, his ancient reporter roommate, his “loser” son and a couple of ghosts from the past to relive those glory days.
King Leary’s adventure is both incredibly funny and incredibly sad. Lewd and bawdy, thoughtful and heartwarming. The King had his moments of glory, scoring winning goals, perfecting his signature move, moments in the sun.
But of course there were costs and insults. As Canadians we know the history of our national sport, the drinking, carousing, corruption, the evolution of the game itself, the road trips, the trades, loyalties and loneliness, shame and glory. So all of Leary’s memories ring very true. It is a hockey story but it is much more than that.
It is also a story qkarrington redemption.
King Leary
Reserved for the Canada Day release challenge unless I can’t help myself from foisting it on someone else as a “must read”. I think it makes for a great Canada Reads book. I found myself reading into it all sorts of things that I have no idea whether the author intended Clay Bors Clinton as our neighbour to the south for example. Right or wrong, thought provoking.
Mar 28, Cort rated it really liked it. This book was chosen as the “Canada Reads” selection. Each year, the Klng Broadcasting Corporation invites four or five noteworthy figures from Canadian arts and letters to nominate a favorite book, quarringtpn only rule being that the volume must reflect Canadian culture and values.
The merits of each book are debated, often quite vigorously, in a series of radio programs, leaty one is selected that year’s Canada Reads winner. The goal is to have every citizen of the nation read the book, in h This book was chosen as the “Canada Reads” selection. The goal is to have every citizen of the nation read the book, leaary hopes that it will generate discussion and debate, increasing the sense of community in the nation. Can you imagine, millions of people earnestly talking about a book?
I know, we already have this. But I ain’t interested in reading what Oprah tells me to read. And sure, sure, the selection process might sound like The Final Four for nerds, but it beats “American Idol”. And yes, what I am saying is that things are better in Canada, and that Americans are a bunch of lazy, intellectually atrophied cementheads.
Quafrington give you “The Family Laery. It’s a remarkable effort, in turns hilarious and heartbreaking.