I Hate Oprah Winfrey - A review of The Dominion of Wyley McFadden

I Hate Oprah Winfrey

A Review of The Dominion of Wyley McFadden by Scott Gardiner

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Instead of relying on the advice of friends, I decided to turn seek out the only source of literary advice that I thought to be, possibly, immune to Oprah's tentacles: The CBC. God bless the CBC. They led me to a wonderful book called The Dominion Of Wyley McFadden by Scott Gardiner. A quick cross reference with The Globe and Mail convinced me that it was a worthy candidate. I sped to the bookstore and, to my surprise, found a copy.

The book design was simple, yet meaningful. The back cover wasn't covered in the graffiti scrawl of unknown endorsements. It simply stated, "David Lynch meets W.O. Mitchell in the most exciting and unpredictable road novel of the year." Most importantly, the word "Oprah" was no where to be seen.

We had a winner.

A winner indeed. This book, my friends, has easily become my favourite book of all time. It is a wonderful example of Canadian literature at its finest. A true road novel, it is the story of a man traveling across the country with a truckload of rats, intent on correcting the glaring ecological imbalance of Alberta's self-declared rat-free status. Not long after the trip begins, he picks up a young female hitchhiker, clearly in distress. As they journey west, McFadden reluctantly shares the details of his plan to re-introduce rats into the fields of Alberta. The girl, in turn, reveals the details of her own dark story. McFadden's history is quirky, jocular, anecdotal, and entirely self-inflicted. The girl's story is entirely the opposite.

The texture of the book changes with the texture of the land - slowly and imperceptibly.

The landscape lends itself cleverly to the mood of the story, both in sympathy and in contrast. The book begins light and happy, but set beneath the cover of the Ontario forest. As they move west, the forest gives way to prairie, and McFadden's story gives way to that of the girl. The geography opens up, the girl opens up, and darkness closes in on the tale. The texture of the book changes with the texture of the land - slowly and imperceptibly.

The writing, in places, is lyrical and almost poetic:

This street has always been his antidote to disinfectant. He used to come down here on weekends just to cleanse his palate. The foetor, the ferment; the yeasty, reasty opulence; the must and fust and frowziness - these compound smells of Chinatown have always acted as a catalyst upon his sleeping salivary. A place of germination even in the dormancy of winter. In his days as a clinician he never got here often enough. Now he stalks the place at will.

The humour is wry, understated, and unmistakeably Canadian:

"The Bible says that God put out the rainbow as a promise that He wouldn't screw us over any more," she tells him out of nowhere.

McFadden brushes the dust from his trousers. "Then we'd better get a move on," he says, disinclined to trust a covenant so clearly unenforceable.

Gardiner manages to catch the subtleties of quietly, slowly falling in love with someone, and not realizing it:

"You did say possums?" she says. "Like in The Beverly Hillbillies?"

"The very same."

"Got you! You said you never watched TV!"

McFadden tries to stop himself from smiling. "The Beverly Hillbillies, my dear girl, dates from a time when television was still in black and white and nobody knew that it was dangerous. Like Walter Raleigh and tobacco."

"Whatever you say, Einstein. So what does he do with them?"

"What does he do with what?"

"No. What does Hu do with possums?" she says, with a giggle that makes McFadden wish that he had diamonds he could give her.

and:

She reads slowly, from one word to the next, tracing the line with a finger, creasing her brow in concentration. From time to time a tiny pink edge of tongue slips out between her lips and he wonders how often it is possible for this girl to break his heart.

My only criticism of the book is Gardiners reliance upon a couple of unpleasant, unnecessary, stereotypes to tell the story. But hey, who the hell am I to criticize a writer's use of clichés.

This book kicks ass.