Publisher's Synopsis
This is an original, enthralling, wild, viscerally exciting and often bleakly funny urban story about Randy Gogarty. He is a free spirit, full of lust, full of himself, and he's lonely. He sets out for Elk Brain, Saskatchewan, intent to set the newspaper world on fire. But it is he who goes up in flames. Confused by idealism and loyalties, he gets fired and then tries to survive a prairie winter with hard drink, car trips across wide open spaces full of grandeur, and his beloved whom he tells "lovely women eat, a crazy salad with their meat" while pouring canola oil on her body in a cold bedroom. Kelly, according to the Vancouver Sun "...never writes a boring sentence..." in a story that emerges from dark reality through a series of sublime ruminations told in an inimitable style—it is full of wonder and life and love, poignant insights, and irrepressible humour as Gogarty ultimately is saved from himself and the dour forces around him in a totally unexpected way. No reader will forget this satirical, desperate, beautiful debut, voted best first novel of the year when it was originally published.
