Since I knew there'd be a federal election October 17, I put Terry Fallis's The Best Laid Plans on the reading list for one of my October book group discussion groups. Right now I'm about half way through it, and until this point I've been amazed at how many resonances this book, published in 2008, has with what's going on now.
True the event that seems to insure that the candidate who only agreed to be a candidate in order to get out of teaching English to Engineers. i (Hint: a sex scandal involving his opponent, leather and nipple rings are involved.) But the vagaries of public opinion as well as the inner workings of political campaign are well portrayed. (Hint: there's quite a bit about lawn signs, telephone canvassing and door to door.)
Of course, I have to confess that in another life I spent far too much time organizing political campaigns and tried in one of my first novels (Endangered Species) to give a taste of the rush a political junkie gets from filling out phone canvass forms. My editor that time around made me cut a lot of the details. Fallis either was smarter than I or had a good editor too, because this novel is mostly fun.
Should also add that this is a very Canadian book: I can't imagine what Fallis would do with Donald Trump.
No comments:
Post a Comment