Vividly conjured out of the hustle and crime of Canada’s poorest neighbourhood, this poetic and picaresque novel stakes a new claim on the fictional territory of Don DeLillo and Chuck Palahniuk.
Bishop isn’t a man most women would find attractive: a middle-aged marijuana dealer who owes his ponytail to hair transplants, and his twisted knowledge of books to the reading he’s done in rehab. But for one brief moment he catches the eye of Beth, an innocent from rural Alberta — who, at that same instant, excites the self-destructive lust of Theresa, a social worker and therapist wannabe. These strange comings-together in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside propel the three characters on a wild race through British Columbia’s mountainous interior, headed toward Bishop’s self-invented city on a hill. It turns out they are also on a journey through concepts of family, urban dislocation, gender identity and the disconnections of language itself.