- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Canada (APB); 1st Printing edition (April 12 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0141000252
- ISBN-13: 978-0141000251
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #662,693 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Kevin Chong's first novel is a gleefully devastating take on pop culture and suburban inanity. Baroque-A-Nova records the confessions of Saul St. Pierre, the love child of the St. Pierres, a marginally famous Canadian folk-pop duo whose marriage and music were unable to outlast their early '70s heyday. Saul's father has remained with his son in Vancouver, enjoying a sluggish, royalty-fed decline, but his mother has long since fled fame, family, and Canada itself for the anonymity of charity work in Southeast Asia. Saul's enjoyment of his mildly troubled teenage existence is thrown into a tumult when a German industrial-pop act called Urethra Franklin samples his parents' one big hit, "Bushmills Threnody," bringing the St. Pierres out of obscurity and indirectly contributing to Saul's mother's suicide.
Pop music is a subject that can defeat even the greatest of novelists; its innate silliness makes it surprisingly resistant to satire, and its ephemeral joys make it almost impossible to set down in fiction, especially when the reader is expected to believe in the success of a band that is invented by an author, invested with lavish praise, and betrayed by snatches of terminally unmemorable lyrics. Chong's novel occasionally loses its magic in contrived "hip" jokes and half-imagined characters, but this is an entertaining (if heartless) novel, filled with send-ups of activist politics, Quebecois VJs in clam-diggers, old hippies, wannabe screenwriters, and pompous German cultural interrogators. --Jack Illingworth
From Publishers Weekly
A Vancouver teenager tries to overcome the legacy of his parent's checkered musical past in Chong's debut novel, a muddled affair that attempts to blend a coming-of-age tale with a satire of '60s and '70s music and comes up short on both counts. Saul St. Pierre is the troubled protagonist whose life takes a strange and tragic turn with the suicide of his mother, Helena, a beautiful but mysterious singer who became famous performing in a folk duo with her husband and then left to live in Thailand after the couple split up. Saul's relationship with his famous father is both tricky and troubled, especially when life does a bad imitation of art and a German band called Urethra Franklin hits it big with a cover of his parents' hit, "Bushmill Threnody." Their fame triggers the arrival of a German film crew doing a documentary on the band, and Saul reacts to his father's renewed celebrity by turning squirrelly with his girlfriend, Rose, as he tries to seduce one of the two young groupies who show up to worship at the altar of his dad's achievements. Chong captures Saul's profound sense of dislocation and teenage angst, and he pens a few brief passages that get beneath the surface of the boy's complex dislike for his father. Even so, Saul never really becomes a full-fledged character, and the hit-and-miss nature of the satiric material makes for a choppy, erratic read. Chong has a flair for tongue-in-cheek irony that he demonstrates in several entertaining scenes, but this book has too many problems with plotting and consistency to be a genuine success.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Like A Song I Can Hear Playing Right In My Head,
By
This review is from: Baroque-A-Nova (Hardcover)
Kevin Chong's book is a fast-paced entertaining reading experience. The premise of a faded once-famous Canadian folk singer's son coming to terms with himself as a young man and his parent's past works well. The charcter of Saul St. Pierre is appropriately confused and ambivalent. The father Ian comes off as a self-absorbed loser who would like to be a better man than he is. I enjoyed the character of Leni, Helena St. Pierre, the reclusive mother who seek and shuns the spotlight at the same time only to walk out on the singing act and wind up in a monestary in Thailand and then commit suicide. We see her in several flashbacks, but she comes off as a woman of mystery, intensely interesting. The plot takes off as Urethra Franklin, a rap band, redoes the St. Pierre's hit "Bushmills Threnody" and causes the spotlight to be refocused on the faded folk act after decades of obscurity. Complications arise as two groupies, Louise and Marina, come into the picture to seduce father and son, respectively. References to other singers like Roger Miller, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Warren Zevon give the tale a sense of reality. At times I was confused as Chong writes dialogue without identifiers that made it hard to determine who was speaking. The novel is alternately funny and touching, but in the end somewhat an enigma, similar to the character of Leni. Jackson Browne once sang, "It's like a song I can hear playing right in my head...," and "Baroque-A-Nova" is similarly a good time if not a great novel. Enjoy.
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love this book like it was the brother I never had.,
By "donkeye" (all up in your face) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Baroque-A-Nova (Hardcover)
I never had a brother so this book was perfect for me, because it was about a young, intrepid young man in high school with a decent libido and a wise-cracking mouth, and I just thought it was so darn funny and warm-hearted and I can't say enough good things about it.I think we can expect great things from Chong, and this book is certainly worth the credit card debt. It's one of those books where you just wish there was some more Chong to read right after. I want more Chong!! More Chong books!!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chong is a God,
This review is from: Baroque-A-Nova (Hardcover)
This may be the best book I've ever read. I laughed so hard I think I cracked my spine. Everyone should read this book, and anyone who doesn't like it should be banned for life from all water slides.Chong for President!
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