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SNOW JOB
by William Deverell
McClelland & Stewart, October 2009
408 pages
$32.99 CAD
ISBN: 0771027222


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Arthur Beauchamp, never quite retired lawyer and reluctant resident of Ottawa, is dragged to some very odd places in the company of some very dubious people in this send-up of current Canadian federal politics.

Nothing would make Arthur Beauchamp happier than to be left in peace on temperate (and fictional) Garibaldi Island off the coast of British Columbia to tend his goats in a manner befitting a Roman statesman, now retired. Happily for us, events simply will not permit him to make a dignified withdrawal into private life (or occasionally much dignity at all).

Arthur's wife Margaret, the leader of the Green Party, has been returned as its sole sitting member of Parliament. A loyal husband, Arthur goes with her to Ottawa, a city he loathes not only for its politics but also for its climate. Though he remains proud and supportive, it does not take much to tempt Arthur out of retirement - he may fancy himself content to linger in the background, holding Margaret's coat, but in fact, bobbing obscurely in her wake suits him not at all.

The Conservative party is in power, as it is at the moment, led by Huck Finnerty, who drinks far more than is good either for him or the country. He presides over a cabinet comprised largely of men promoted far beyond their competence and one woman, who is competent but excluded from all serious decisions. It is a cabinet exquisitely attuned to the needs of the Alberta oil industry and to the overriding necessity of remaining in power as long as possible. So when a carload of diplomats from the nation of Bhashyistan is spectacularly blown up on its way to the Ottawa airport and the leader of that republic, affectionately known as Mad Igor, arrests some Canadian oil company executives who are in his country to deal for oil leases, Huck and his cabinet go into bibulous overdrive. When, subsequently, Mad Igor declares war on Canada, the testosterone level in the cabinet room breaks all levels. As you may well imagine, things do not go well from there on out.

For reasons impossible to explain briefly (or perhaps at all), Arthur is catapulted into the middle of this mess. In a gloriously loopy plot and accompanied by a dubious spy from the Canadian intelligence agency CSIS, Arthur travels back and forth between Ottawa and Garibaldi, finally winding up in, of all places, Albania, where he takes comfort in the fact that it is warmer than Ottawa in December.

This is a book no Canadian political junkie should miss. It is riotously funny and pitiless in its send-up of the inadequacies of a government devoted primarily to retaining power for its own sake. Deverell wisely avoids lampooning individuals, but the current Canadian Conservative government is not spared. Though the Liberals largely escape comment as they are largely absent from the scene, the party that comes off best in all this is the Green Party, led in the book by Arthur's wife and perhaps modelled on the actual present leader of the party, Elizabeth May, who has contributed a suitably appreciative blurb for the book jacket.

Readers unfamiliar with Canadian politics may not find this book as utterly delightful as I do, but they should find a lot here to entertain all the same. Arthur Beauchamp is quick to provide a Latin tag when the occasion permits. As his beloved Horace had it, ridentem dicere verum quid vetat, or, more or less, "nothing forbids a laughing man from telling the truth." And, since we are left with a tantalizing final paragraph, we can hope that he will return soon to speak more truth and make us laugh.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, November 2009

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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