Rogues' Wedding [Paperback]

Rogues' Wedding, the second novel by Governor General's Award nominee Terry Griggs, is a wild and kinetic affair, a strange and bawdy anti-Odyssey set in the rough and colourful backwoods Ontario of the late 1890s. The hero of Griggs's picaresque is Griffith Smolders, a repressed young Catholic who bolts from his wedding night before even attempting to consummate his marriage, spooked by a bolt of ball lightning that enters through the window of his honeymoon suite as he begins to undress. Pausing only to steal a priest's jacket, Griff runs for the north woods, enduring a series of misadventures involving con men, murderesses, shipwrecks, and autodidact biologist-hermits. Griff's flight is the sole concern of the first half of the book; in the second half, his spurned bride, Avice, runs him aground in a tiny Manitoulin Island town, where he has taken refuge in an unusual inn with a 13-year-old proprietor. Avice proceeds to exact her revenge, daily making attempts on Griff's life and taking up with a trollish, "in-kneed, cack-handed, and hircine" lover. Finally, events come to a very strange head--one that involves child brides, bonnet-wearing crows, and the production of the world's first pornographic film.

The strangeness of Griggs's novel is matched by its panache. She takes the tall tales of rural Ontario and turns them into a story that moves with the speed and certitude of a bullet. Rogues' Wedding has the hilarity of a Jack Hodgins novel and the inquisitive menace of the Melville who wrote The Confidence-Man and Moby Dick. It's definitive proof that fiction about the Victorian bush doesn't have to be stodgy, dull, or conventional. For those who enjoy a good smart cock-and-bull story, Rogues' Wedding is a must-read. --Jack Illingworth --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Praise for Rogues' Wedding:

“With her first story, published twenty years ago, Terry Griggs made her mark as an original and arresting writer with a potential to be consistently inventive and brilliant. With her latest novel, Rogues’ Wedding, she shows herself to be in complete control of the language in which she revels, a wizard of plot and style, a master of comedy, a courageous, ambitious, exuberant creator of fictional marvels.” -- comment from the jury of the Marian Engel Award

“Terry Griggs returns continues to astound with her quirky sense of craft, a delightful mixture of reality and farce, and sharply drawn characters. She’s a hoot. Rogues’ Wedding is a rollicking romp and frivolously fantastical; it’s not heavy, but heavenly.” -- The Hamilton Spectator

“However a reader interprets Rogues’ Wedding, Griggs’ talent for creating engaging characters, both major and minor, her inventiveness with language, her mischievous humour and her refreshing sense of the absurd are sure to please and delight.” -- The Kitchener/Waterloo Record

“Forget the Runaway Bride. Terry Griggs has just immortalized the runaway bridegroom. She’s a wildly inventive storyteller, gifted with a superb turn of phrase. But what a delicious trifle she serves, with Victorian-Gothic panache. Griggs’ dark sense of humour prevails, making Rogues’ Wedding a most engaging read, highly recommended for newlyweds.” -- The Gazette (Montreal) and The Calgary Herald

“In Rogues’ Wedding Griggs hones her voice, creating an unforgettable historical picaresque that paints Victorian Ontario as anything but stodgy and dull. This book is a carnival, filled with freaks and wonders. The narrative is preposterous, the characters fabulous, drawn sharper than life, coloured more brightly, yet after you put the book down, you see them everywhere.” -- The Ottawa Citizen

“Rogues’ Wedding is hugely enjoyable to read, a smart and lively take on social conventions…” -- Uptown magazine, Winnipeg

“Terry Griggs’s second novel is as exuberantly inventive, verbally juiced up and sexually outrageous as her first, The Lusty Man -- and more pointedly iconoclastic….The language, the verbal fireworks, the apparently limitless stream of image and metaphor -- startling, heady, hilarious -- do it all.” -- The Globe and Mail

“The result is both high drama and comedy, rolling into one. Rogues’ Wedding is a hoot, a wonderful shaggy dog story, and, for the readers around Georgian Bay, a book full of the familiar. It is part farce, part quest, and wildly comic.” -- The Sun Times (Owen Sound)

“With astonishing talent and control, [Griggs] smashes apart Victorian society (and modern society by extension) and rebuilds it as a Swiftian fantasy, raucous as Huckleberry Finn and nearly as bizarre as Alice in Wonderland…This is a rich mixture, intensely intoxicating and bestowing delicious feelings of hallucination.” -- Quill & Quire

Praise for Terry Griggs:

“Griggs creates magical transformations with words alone.” -- The Vancouver Sun

“. . . like Robertson Davies on speed.” -- The Globe and Mail