This Guest of Summer

Michael Williamson was Reference Librarian at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa.

Mr. Doran’s first novel is the “Grand Winner” of Pulp Press’s sixth international three-day novel-writing contest. Pulp’s marketing bravado is matched only by Jack McClelland’s costumes: Pulp’s claim that their annual Labour Day contest “has spawned what is probably the only genuinely Canadian genre in world literary history” is not made without some evidence to back it up. Last year’s winner, bp nichol’s Still, was a first-rate literary work — not a novel, but a poetic, surprisingly well constructed novelette that has considerable power. Any critic reviewing Pulp’s contest winners must necessarily employ different criteria for critical evaluation, and the most important criterion of all is this: is this work credible at all considering the absurd time limitation imposed? The answer in Mr. Doran’s case is, happily, yes, if you consider the time limitation. This Guest of Summer is an ambitious mélange — part mystery, part romance, and part parable. The book contains flourishes of very fine, quite effective imagistic prose that almost transcends the quirky, not quite believable narrative. The plot concerns what happens to an ambitious high-tech entrepreneur and his dancer wife when they leave their busy lives in Montreal to realize his dream of owning a rural retreat in Nova Scotia. It is a weird, almost gothic tale with convincing local portraits (Mr. Doran in fact lives in rural Nova Scotia) and unsettling plot twists. The protagonist, Jack Milford, is obsessed with his dream of becoming a young millionaire; “God, I love owning things!” he proclaims. What happens to him and his relationship to his wife in Nova Scotia is the crux of the story. Since the book is being marketed as a mystery, there’s little point in divulging what does happen, even though it is not all that mysterious. Mr. Doran has managed to cram a lot into his short novelette and it does read with a loose purposefulness: the dialogue is crisp and accurate, descriptive passages are well drawn, and the narrative thrust does keep one’s interest. Character development is spotty: there is not one likeable character in the book and who knows what motivates them. But then you can not accomplish everything in three days.