Customer Reviews

Whale Music

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You might say that winning the Governor General's Award is enough to recommend "Whale Music," but when books win awards like this it makes people think of them as dry and somehow... literary. This book is "literary," but it is also compellingly readable, delightfully entertaining, the kind of book you spill coffee on in the morning because you can't wait to get back to it. It has a sense of humour as well as a sense of a deeper meaning--as in other Quarrington novels, each one requires the other.

The story takes place in the California mansion of the "Whale Man:" Des Howell, former member of the "Howell Brothers," one half of which team has recently died. Des is having a hard time adjusting to his brother's death. He is also in a continuously drunk, drugged and mentally unstable condition, which is made more precarious by the persistent invasion of undersirables such as his mother, reporters, record executives--people squeezing out more money and forcing the obese, hermitic Whale Man to blockade his house to avoid institutionalization. The one thing which keeps Des focused is in composing the dreamlike Whale Music which he will use to summon the whales. One day he wakes up to find a guest: Claire, "the naked alien from the far-off planet of Toronto." She has come to him for personal reasons and also because she believes in him, without recompense.

Quarrington borrows the events from the real life of a former member of the Beach Boys who became a recluse and drug addict in similar circumsances, but reality and fiction are woven together so expertly, like music weaving its way into silence, that it just becomes part of the joke, a device which he employs. To the Whale Man, music is an ethereal being with a spirit all its own... "The music ends, that is to say, it disappears forever to journey in the cosmos." The book is written in the present tense and frequently addresses the reader, inviting you in to make you feel like part of the story. This time, however, he has discarded the sporting subject matter of his two previous novels, "King Leary" and "Home Game," for that of music, clearly another area of expertise.

Desmond Howell's self-declared philosophy is a twisted kind of existentialism: "The most one can do is try to produce some pitiful piece of prettiness, a song, and send it out into the world, a cripple dressed in rags." If this is Paul Quarrington's philosophy as well, then this is his fifth such song, a wonderful one, and I look forward to reading them all.

I remember reading some years ago that Brian Wilson is reported to have remarked - "Whale Music is the best book about the Beach Boys that I have read." Why not?

There are a rare few writers in our society that can capture the paradox between the fragility and strength of the human spirit like Paul Quarrington. The alcoholic, drug-addicted main character spends his time talking to ghosts of his past, dunking his naked, corpulent body in the pool, and working on a composition for the whales below his cliff-side house. An uninvited visitor from another universe turns his life upside-down and he is forced to face the ghosts of his past, present, and future. In the process he lays bare those things that we most hide about our own selves, that make up the very essence of those things which make us human. If you like books which forever change the way you look at life, "Whale Music" is for you

Anyone who has been semi conscious on Earth over the last 40 years knows that "Whale Music" draws it's inspiration from The Beach Boy's creative genius; Brian Wilson. As I recollect, Mr. Quarrington's book hit the shelves at about the same time as Mr. Wilson's autobiography. Having read both, I would choose to re-read 'Whale Music'. At it's worst, it's fictionalized take off on the man's life is extremely entertaining. At it's best, it's a great satire of the media's reporting of Mr. Wilson's every ingested cheeseburger. I love this book and, I especially love Brian Wilson's contribution to the world.

It has been at least ten years since I read this book but I still remember it fondly. It is largely a thinly-fictionalized account of the turbulent life of Brian Wilson, not exactly, but he is obviously the prototype for the eccentric musical genius protagonist and former songwriter/producer/singer of a California-based brother act. I was insipred to try to track it down again after reading about an all-star Brian Wilson tribute concert. My dim memory of this book is that the narrator is the Wilson-based character, who also reminded me a bit of the hero of John Kennedy Toole's great rambling novel "A Confederacy of Dunces." There are some laugh-out-loud sequences in this book as well as the expected tortured-artist tales. I would gladly read it again.

Quarrington's Whale Music is as decadent and sincere as its main character. A touching story doused in an absurd fondue of drug abuse, money, rock and roll, and agoraphobia. Track this one down!

Did Random House lose the Quark Express files to this book? The printing quality of this edition is just miserable. It almost appears like they scanned in each page from the paper back edition and then blew up the image to softcover size. The print quality is hazy and wavy. One page the last four letters of each word on the right margin are cut off.

A fine enough book otherwise, just avoid buying this edition. Get a properly typeset used copy somewhere. Anywhere.