New Releases by Paul Quarrington

Paul rolls into Hope—Population 1001—late at nigh on his thirtieth birthday, on the lam from his wife and a surprise party he has known about for weeks He is trying to escape the Big city and get some serious work done on his second novel, but finds the diversions of Hope no less seductive than those he has fled. One of those diversions is the two-hundred-year-old legendary fish, Ol'' Mossback. Paul could hardly pass up the chance to land such a fish. He puts aside his work-in-progress in an attempt to discover the mysteries of Hope, with all its quirky characters, and to finally be able to answer the question, "talked with Ol'' Mossback lately?"

As he braves rills, rivers, and ocean waters in search of his elusive quarry, Paul Quarrington’s casts are as likely to call up thoughts of his troubled marriage, his father’s death, or one of midlife’s existential questions as they are to yield a fish, big or small. But whatever his trials and triumphs, he is never without his wickedly perverse sense of humor. Whether you’re a dedicated river wader or an armchair angler, you’ll find him an irresistible companion.

Received with almost unanimous accolades from critics and readers alike, Civilization is the amazing tale of Thom Moss, a young man who sets out in the early twentieth century in search of a grand adventure. He soon finds himself in the thick of Hollywoodland, employed as an actor by the renowned Caspar Willison, master of the two-reel cowboy flicker. However, Thom''s fortune quickly takes a ruinous turn and he lands in the Penitentiary, where he writes the story of his downfall. At once hilarious and courageous, Civilization is a daring work by one of Canada''s finest novelists.

Nathanael "Crybaby" Isbister was once the greatest baseball player in the world, but now he''s a down-on-his-luck drifter on the road to oblivion. That is until he wanders into a circus sideshow troupe stranded in a tiny Michigan town dominated by a hellfire-and brimstone religious sect. The sect vows to drive the troupe out, but give them one unlikely chance to remain--the baseball game to end all baseball games. A funny, moving novel, Home Game walks the straight but delicate line between absurdity and compassion with dazzling style and expertise.

Des Howell is a former rock ''n'' roll star who never leaves his secluded oceanfront mansion. Naked, rich and fabulously deranged, he subsists on a steady diet of whiskey, pharmaceuticals and jelly doughnuts and occasionally works on his masterpiece, "Whale Music." One day, upon awakening from his usual drunken stupor, Des discovers on his sofa a young alien from the faraway universe of Toronto. This girl has made the trek to Des'' hideaway because she believes in the "Whale Music" and she''s crazy enough to think that Des can make a comeback hit with his mad magnum opus--

After a slow climb out of the strip clubs and flesh pots of Europe, Jurgen and Rudolfo have hit the big time in Las Vegas, headlining a slick and well-oiled magic act. Rudolfo, a true misfit, is content orchestrating the spectacle, but Jurgen, stricken since childhood with the irrational desire to make magic, hungers for more. He finds it in a musty, mysterious collection of old manuscripts and magic cabinetry that once belonged to Houdini. And when he turns into the miracle-working saint of Las Vegas, chaos results. In a narrative that is whimsical, comic and melancholy by turns, Quarrington takes dead aim at the place in the human heart that hopes that doves can bloom from top hats and illusions can come true.

Selected as the 2008 CBC Canada Reads Winner! "A dazzling display of fictional footwork… The author has not written just another hockey novel; he has turned hockey in a metaphor for magic." Maclean''s Percival Leary was once the King of the Ice, one of hockey''s greatest heroes. Now, in the South Grouse Nursing Home, where he shares a room with Edmund "Blue" Hermann, the antagonistic and alcoholic reporter who once chronicled his career, Leary looks back on his tumultuous life and times: his days at the boys'' reformatory when he burned down a house; the four mad monks who first taught him to play hockey; and the time he executed the perfect "St. Louis Whirlygig" to score the winning goal in the 1919 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.

From one of Canada’s beloved fiction writers comes a tale of love and loss, guilt and forgiveness -- and finding redemption in the eye of a hurricane. Few people seek out the tiny Caribbean island of Dampier Cay. Visitors usually wash up there by accident, rather than by design. But this weekend, three people will fly to the island deliberately. They are not coming for a tan or fun in the sun. They are coming because Dampier Cay is where it is, and they have reason to believe that they might encounter something there that most people take great measures to avoid -- a hurricane. A lottery windfall and a few hours of selfishness have robbed Caldwell of all that was precious to him, while Beverly, haunted by tragedy and screwed by fate since birth, has given up on life. Also on the flight is Jimmy Newton, a professional storm chaser and videographer who will do anything for the perfect shot. Waiting for them at Dampier is the manager of the Water’s Edge Hotel, “Bonefish” Maywell Hope, who arrived at Dampier by the purest accident of all -- the accident of birth. A descendent of the pirates who sailed the Caribbean hundreds of years ago, Hope believes if he works hard enough, he can prevent the inevitable. Until, that is, the seas begin to rise . . . Cinematic and harrowing, spiced with Quarrington’s trademark humour, Galveston shows just how far people will go to feel alive.

In Paul Quarrington''s favorite childhood recording, a boy fashions a banjo from a cigar box, pluckily sets off for a contest in the next town, and wins with a song that weaves in the sounds he hears along the way: a bluebird trilling, truck tires whining. Years later, a writer and musician himself, Quarrington is suddenly diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and begins to ponder the path his own life has taken and the music it''s made along the way. Quarrington ruminates on the bands of his childhood; his restless youth, spent playing bass with a cult band; and his incarnation, in middle age, as rhythm guitarist and singer with the band Porkbelly Futures. From rock''n''roll to country and soul, he explores how songs are made, how they work, and why they affect us so deeply.

One morning in Don Mills, Phil and his brother Jay agree to let their friend Norman Kitchen tag along on an adventure down into a ravine — and what happens there at the hands of two pitiless teenagers changes all their lives forever. Years later the horrifying details are still unclear, smothered in layers of deliberate forgetting. Phil doesn’t even remember the names: Ted and Terry? Tom and Tony? It’s only when he descends into a crisis of his own that he comes to realize that perhaps, as he drunkenly tells a crisis line counsellor, “I went down into a ravine, and never really came back out.” The Ravine is Phil’s book — we read it as he types it, in the basement apartment he’s called home since his wife kicked him out for having an affair with a make-up girl. As he writes, and then corrects what he’s written, we hear how he went from promising young playwright to successful, self-hating TV producer. We listen in on his disastrous late-night phone calls, and watch his brother (once a brilliant classical pianist) weep to himself as he plays Ravel and Waltzing Matilda in a desolate bar. The Ravine tells us all about the influence of The Twilight Zone on Phil’s work and his life — how it helped him meet his wife Veronica and then lose her, and how it led to the bizarre death of his friend, TV star Edward Milligan. Sometimes, when Phil’s drunk, a friend will look at what he’s written so far and call him on it — like when Jay tells Phil that he’s remembered it all wrong: that he was just as good as Phil at tying knots back when they were in the cubs. Phil’s “ravine” is his attempt to make sense of things, to try to understand how everything went so wrong just as it seemed to be going so right. But The Ravine is also a Paul Quarrington novel, meaning that it’s hilarious and ingenious, quietly working its magic until the reader is at once heartbroken and hopeful. A darkly funny story about loss and redemption, The Ravine is also about how stories are made — how they can pull us out of disasters that seem too much for anyone to bear — and about how, sometimes, what we need to forgive ourselves for is not what we think it is at all.

Une île au large de la Jamaïque, peuplée de quelques familles qui descendent de pirates, se prépare à voir déferler l''ouragan Claire. C''est alors que débarque un "drôle d''équipage" ayant parmi ses membres un célèbre chasseur d''ouragans, un réalisateur, un caméraman, etc. B. Gowdy, auteure des ##Romantiques##, a apprécié "l''observation compatissante des mécanismes de l''obsession". Et le critique du ##Libraire## voit dans l''oeuvre "un drame humain d''une beauté tragique". L''auteur, romancier, musicien et scénariste torontois, a été lauréat, en 1989, du Prix littéraire du Gouverneur général. [SDM].

"As their stories unfold, the tragic underpinnings of Beverly and Caldwell''s lives are revealed, a story line that builds just as the hurricane looms ever closer on the horizon."--BOOK JACKET.

As he cruises the Galapagos Islands in the company of his daughter, aged seven, and his father, aged seventy-three, Paul Quarrington ponders questions great and small. Equal parts memoir, travel book and good old-fashioned yarn, The Boy on the Back of the Turtle is a funny, poignant look at the mysteries of our universe.

"This story is about madness", Paul Quarrington admits blithely in his delightful tale of great fish and mortal men. Thus readers may discern they have joined up with devoted anglers; sane people wouldn''t visit a cold, windswept isle in vain pursuit of the world''s largest speckled trout. However, most people have never been importuned by the likes of Gordon Deval, teacher extraordinaire and singular proponent of transcendental fishing wisdom. A longtime North American casting champion, Deval is Quarrington''s "old guy", the wise man who can teach him about angling''s mysterious ways. Quarrington innocently accompanies him to northern Quebec in search of "the one that got away", a humongous trout that Deval, like a modern Ahab, hooked and lost years earlier. With a keen eye for humorous detail and a razor-sharp sense of the absurd, Quarrington gives us a book that is one part tall tale, one part true adventure, and one hundred percent irresistible. More than just a thigh-slappingly funny story of an ill-starred fishing trip, Fishing with My Old Guy is an exploration of the art of angling, the love of wilderness, and the nature of friendship.

A voyage of discovery undertaken by two women. Camilla is in her 80s and full of stories of her dazzling life as a professional violinist; Frieda is in her 20s, with a shaky marriage and doubts about her career. The journey they take together lasts three days, and takes them into their dreams.

A humorous novel about the longest overtime game in the history of hockey.