Bonk on the Head

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

Royal Military College (RMC) is the select university where young male
and female cadets are educated and trained in preparation for service as
Canadian Forces officers. Admission standards are high, and once in,
students face a challenging curriculum of academic study, physical
exercise, and military discipline.

A somewhat different view of the place is presented in this
individualistic novel. It is trendily billed as a Bildungsromans, an
angst-torn young man’s journey of self-discovery, which may be why it
is so difficult to grasp the author’s intent.

At one level, Bonk on the Head seems mainly a sweeping indictment of
RMC as a den of bullying sadists and gross behaviour, supposedly based
on John-James Ford’s experiences while he was a cadet there. The
novel’s origins are unusual in that Ford first wrote the manuscript as
his thesis while attending the University of New Brunswick, then got it
published as a mainstream novel.

Ford’s writing style is erratic and gleefully vulgar, ranging from
wrenching descriptions of family hatred to incoherent monologues about
the meaning of life. Bonk on the Head is not likely to be everyone’s
cup of tea.