Galveston [Hardcover]

Paul Quarrington has done it again. One of Canada's great comic writers, Quarrington has throughout his career proven himself expert at mixing the absurdities and ironies of life with flawed but likeable characters, and his ninth novel is no exception. Galveston takes place on the tiny Caribbean outpost of Dampier Cay, where a trio of self-professed "weather weenies" convene in search of the eye of an approaching hurricane. Caldwell, Beverley, and Jimmy Newton, a.k.a. "Mr. Weather," all have different reasons for searching out weather at its most extreme. Meanwhile, Gail and Sorvig, two employees of the cable channel Planet Man simply looking for a party, have also happened upon the island--and boy, have they ever chosen the wrong island at the wrong time. As Hurricane Claire--categorized, to Newton's delight, as a "force five" storm on a scale that goes no higher--approaches, the visitors gather at the Water's Edge resort to await, and hopefully survive, the storm.

This being a Quarrington novel, passages of stark beauty, such as descriptions of storms ("he had watched the clouds form…flattening out to form huge anvils"), alternate with darkly comic insight ("in the land of the damned, there is no nap time") and spot-on descriptions ("They were...dancing with grim purpose"). Fans of the author will recognize familiar tropes, such as fly-fishing and the conflict between the secular and spiritual. First-time readers will simply have a hard time putting down, or letting go of, a suspense-filled story populated by people heartbreakingly human no matter how bizarre their idiosyncrasies and quirks. And anyone who reads Galveston will batten down the hatches a little tighter the next time a storm approaches. --Shawn Conner

“It's brilliant; I loved every page of it. It has a lovely lightness, the words and characters, and
it manages always to be funny and real.”
—Roddy Doyle

“Lovely and amazing … Galveston isn’t highfaluting: it tells a story, and it knows how to get laughs. But this compact, enchanting book succeeds on another, more profound, level — its mission is to remind us of the unseen currents in life, and the ways in which people’s fates can be affected by a change in the wind…. A stylistic tour de force; readers will be — yes — blown away. Galveston is a novel of great compassion; Quarrington does a knockout job of conveying to us the importance of every human breath.”
– Quill & Quire

“Paul Quarrington takes readers into the eye of a storm.”
—The Ottawa Citizen

“Buy Galveston right now, but save it for a rainy day–a really rainy day. Paul Quarrington’s ninth novel (and one of his best) is a terrific, brilliant, near-perfect piece of vacation reading for that inevitable low in every holiday when black clouds gather, the sky turns to thunder, plans fall apart and a paper world is preferable to the real one. Galveston will keep you engrossed page by page until daylight fades, the power goes out or a bottle of wine gets the better of you….”
—T.F. Rigelhof, The Globe and Mail

“His characters are drawn just to the edge of believability and treated with wry humour and dry wit…. Quarrington expertly creates extraordinarily visual imagery of storms and approaching hurricane, and effortlessly weaves the weather around the turbulent lives of his characters.”
—The Calgary Herald, Sarah Deveau, 15 May 2004

“Quarrington has a dark side…in Galveston, the darkness is more apparent than ever. So while there are times when the catastrophe does get laid on a bit thick, Quarrington, who invariably writes about misfits, writes about them wonderfully here. He lets his characters voice all their screwy and occasionally bang-on pronouncements on fate, luck, regret, loss and God’s silence…. Everyone talks about the weather, another old saying goes, but no one does anything about it. Well, Quarrington has: he’s written an engaging and intelligent novel about it. Put this on the back cover of the next edition: reading Galveston is more fun than watching the Weather Channel.”
—The Montreal Gazette, Joel Yanofsky, 15 May 04

“In a startling tour de force of comedy, tragedy and wry observations on the nature of loss, guilt and sorrow, Quarrington’s tale delivers a wallop like a gale-force wind. Loose as a fable but taut as the need to survive, Galveston is a rollicking depiction of man versus the cyclone within…. Quarrington…writes cinematically and the tension evokes the harrowing noir of Key Largo or the explosive ride of Twister. The magnitude of deadly force fills the pages and reading it becomes a storm watch itself.”
—The Citizen’s Weekly, Richard Wagamese, 16 May 2004

“But throughout all of Canadian literature, there remains one constant truth: There’s odd, and then there’s Paul Quarrington odd.”
—Corey Redekop, Winnipeg Free Press, 16 May 2004

“His lean, masterful prose is slicked with irony and can raise a smile.”
—Rebecca Wigod, The Vancouver Sun, 9 June 2004

“Paul Quarrinton’s sense of humour definitely lies on the quirky, even bizarre, side of life…. Galveston’s humour is a veil over the astonishing grief that human beings can endure. Quarrington makes you laugh, but also slams you in the solar plexus.”
—Candace Fertile, Times Colonist, 20 June 2004

"A terrific novel, as impressive for its compassionate inquiry into the psychology of obsession as for its remarkable narrative urgency."
—Barbara Gowdy

Praise for The Spirit Cabinet:
“No one gives humanity to life’s oddballs as well and as sensitively as Paul Quarrington.”
—Roddy Doyle