The Nine Planets

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

Inventive, urbane, witty, and devastatingly satiric aptly sums up this
novel. The inventiveness we have come to expect: Riche’s Rare Birds
charted new territory in terms of plot and situation, and now The Nine
Planets introduces The Red Pines, a private school in St. John’s, with
its unlikely co-owners, Marty Devereaux and Hank Lundrigan, its misfit
teachers, and its post-pubescent students. In itself, it’s an
environment ripe for satire, and Riche makes the most of it. Then he
extends it to the pretentious (but rich) parents, the artsy-fartsy
community (academia, writers, and artists), and the business types who
control it all (or try to when confronted by the conservationists).
It’s a great send-up of almost everything held precious by modern
society, and the satire is Swiftian and sure. Of two writers Riche
observes: “[H]e and Rex got along, both were members of some
‘writers’ league’ in town. Marty understood they met monthly for
sandwiches, cake, and regional pieties before breaking off into smaller
groups to diminish each other’s work. Rex was the sole dramatist of
the gang. Experimentation in confessional short fiction was their
metier—airy pieces without beginnings, middles, or ends.”

Riche is a very accomplished writer, perhaps the best satirist in
Canada today. He is very funny in a masochistic kind of way, and offers
us a new, if somewhat warped, vision of modern society. The Nine Planets
is well worth reading.