From Amazon
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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
–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
Book Description
No more rec-room train sets. Now Linwood was hauling fish guts to the woods for burial, answering distress calls from women in the ladies’ room who found themselves without toilet paper, and standing in leaky chest-waders pounding dock posts into the lake bottom.
The chores weren’t so bad, especially when he could help his father, who had been a commercial artist before he bought his way into the tourist business. And in other ways, it was a good life for a boy. He had wheels (a John Deere riding mower), a small aluminum boat with a 9.5-horsepower outboard and only one speed (fast), and Chipper, a dog that chased boats the way other dogs chase cars, sometimes with catastrophically comic results. Linwood also had access to The Chart, a cottage reservations list that was, for him, a guide to the arrivals and departures of the guests’ teenaged daughters. Summer romances could be as intense as they were heartbreaking.
When he was sixteen, an unexpected tragedy changed Linwood’s life again. His older brother, Rett, helped out as best he could, but he was wrestling with demons of his own – often withdrawing into his own complicated inner world. Linwood found an extended family in the resort’s guests, who lent him a hand, and shaped him into the man he would become.
His mother’s eccentricities (she quit driving to shame the police for having given her a ticket) made Linwood’s new responsibilities heavier than they might otherwise have been. When he finally decided to move away from Green Acres to make a separate life, she made it as difficult as possible for him.
In the midst of all this, Linwood found his vocation, and mentors, too, in Margaret Laurence, and in Kenneth Millar, who (under the pen name Ross MacDonald) wrote a highly successful series of detective novels.
In this memoir, Linwood Barclay looks back with humour, sadness, and affection on the singular circumstances of his coming of age.
From the Back Cover
–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
