- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (May 6 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0771010788
- ISBN-13: 978-0771010781
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 15 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 431 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #460,707 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In the mid-'60s, when Linwood Barclay was around 11, his father's once-thriving career in commercial art dried up as photography began to take over advertising. "Dad became the equivalent of a modern-day blacksmith," he remembers. His mother, always "looking for a way to embrace her love for trailers more intimately," suggested the idea of a tourist business as a fallback position: a trailer park or a place combining trailers and cottages. The search for a place began--and ended--at Green Acres, on Pigeon Lake in the Kawartha Lakes, Victoria County, Ontario: 10 acres, 400 feet of shoreline, cottages and spaces for about 20 trailers. Barclay's life was about to change forever.
Last Resort is the humorous and bittersweet retelling of Barclay's coming of age at Green Acres. It is the story of unforgettable childhood summers at the camp: the endless and passionate pursuit of girls; adventures with boats, with buddies, and with a half-crazed, boat-chasing, wave-biting mutt; classic fishing expeditions; the discovery that meaningful and lasting friendship is possible between a child and an adult. Yet for Barclay, the years at Green Acres would also become a moving object lesson in the art of growing up. Family crises and dysfunction abound. His combative mother gives up driving "on principle" after receiving a traffic ticket; a brother's life is circumscribed by his struggle with mental illness; and his father's failing health and early death catapults a 17-year-old Linwood into a world of adult concerns and responsibilities. Last Resort is memorable for its quirky mix of irreverent humour, nostalgia, and loss. Summers are special because they don't last, and Barclay's memoir is an easygoing yet affecting meditation on beginnings and endings--large and small. --Svenja Soldovieri
Review
“A moving, bittersweet and naturally funny memoir of a young man’s coming of age under somewhat peculiar circumstances.”
–London Free Press
“…manages to capture something elusive: the magical, almost ineffable wonder of childhood, where the sense of freedom offered by a nine-horsepower boat, a summer romance or the first serious conversation with an adult offers a promise of life which one rarely shakes off in later years.”
–National Post
–London Free Press
“…manages to capture something elusive: the magical, almost ineffable wonder of childhood, where the sense of freedom offered by a nine-horsepower boat, a summer romance or the first serious conversation with an adult offers a promise of life which one rarely shakes off in later years.”
–National Post
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful memoir,
By Patricia (Toronto, ON) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Last Resort: A Memoir (Hardcover)
This is a lovely, yet painful memoir of growing up in Ontario cottage country. Not only do we read of Linwood's coming of age while working at his family's seasonal campground, we also get a very honest view of what it is to live with a sibling who is mentally ill and a mother that is just not quite all there.A beautiful book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious, with a bite,
By A Customer
This review is from: Last Resort: A Memoir (Paperback)
Linwood Barclay, one of the funniest writers in Canada, has written a memoir of his youth that will have every reader saying, "Yeah, I always wondered who owned those holiday fishing camp things on Lake Wishamagog." The Barclays did.But in this memoir, Barclay has done something much more ambitious than make the reader laugh with recognition on each page. He has what the humorist Joey Slinger calls "meatloaf memories", recalling the things that weren't so funny like a father's death and a mother's insane expectation that her son will remain in a parallel version of her world. I used to think funny was the hardest writing to carry off, but funny and painful is actually worse. The Camp Wishamagogs I drive by on the highway now radiate powerful emotions at me as I pass. If you're not into anguish, there's a lot of outhouse maintenance information in here for Red Green types. A beautifully handled memoir.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Linwood, this one's for you,
By Dorkface Petunia (Boston, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Last Resort: A Memoir (Paperback)
Barclay has finally revealed his long buried genius in this masterpiece. I've been reading the Toronto Star for years and never actually found anything he said very funny, but this book defied all my expectations with its brilliant gems of sparkling Linwoodisms. Now if I had actually read the book maybe you should listen to me. Really I'm just writing this so he stops complaining in print that nobody's reviewed him.
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