Synopses & Reviews
Earnest, small-town Lawrence Campbell is fascinated by his poetry professor, the charismatic and uncompromising Jim Arsenault. Larry is determined to escape a life of thrifty drudgery and intellectual poverty working for his parents motel and mini-golf business on Prince Edward Island. Jim appears to the young poet as a beacon of authenticity – mercurial, endlessly creative, fearless in his confrontations with the forces of conformity. And he drinks a lot.
Jims magnetic personality soon draws Larrys entire poetry composition class into his orbit. Among the other literary acolytes are Sherrie Mitten, with her ringletted blonde hair and guileless blue eyes, the turtlenecked, urbane Claude who writes villanelles, and the champion of rhyming couplets about the heroic struggles of the Maritime proletariat, Todd. Casting a huge shadow over the group is the varsity football player and recreational drug user Chuck Slaughter – titanically strong, capriciously violent, hilariously indifferent to the charms of the poetic life – who has nearly given up terrifying Larry in order to pursue an awkward romantic interest in Sherrie.
Drawn by ambition and fascination, the group assembles itself fawningly around Jim, tagging along to bars, showing up at readings, thrilled to be invited to Jims home, a shambling farmhouse in the woods where he lives with Moira, his shrewish backwoods muse. Lost in adulation, Larry is so delighted to be singled out for Jims attention that he does not pause to wonder what Jim expects from his increasingly close relationship with the young poet.
Closely observed and deeply funny, Mean Boy tells the story of Larrys year-long battle against the indiscriminate use of quotation marks in advertising and his disillusionment as his narcissistic, hard-drinking idol spins out of control and threatens to take the young mans cherished notions about art and poetry down with him. Mean Boy is Lynn Coadys most polished and ambitious work to date.
About the Author
Lynn Coady was nominated for the 1998 Governor Generals Award for Fiction for her first novel, Strange Heaven. She received the Canadian Authors Association/Air Canada Award for the best writer under thirty and the Dartmouth Book and Writing Award for fiction. Her second book, Play the Monster Blind, was a national bestseller and a Best Book of 2000 for The Globe and Mail; Saints of Big Harbour, also a bestseller, was a Globe and Mail Best Book in 2002. Her articles and reviews have appeared in several publications including Saturday Night, This magazine, and Chatelaine. Lynn Coady lives in Edmonton.