Joseph Kertes’ second novel for adults is an interesting hybrid: part road novel, part unabashed romance, mediated by its protagonists being typical Canadians counterpointed against a sleazy U.S. setting. Clyde and Eddie are brothers from Toronto: Clyde, brash, self-absorbed, fast-talking, entrepreneurial, is a wife-cheating broker; Eddie, sensitive, innocent, well-intentioned, and more than a little adrift in his own life, works in a camera shop and is taking a night class in “Heroes and Anti-Heroes in Modern Culture” which requires him to read Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. Naturally, when they are thrown together for a car trip to the faded splendours of Atlantic City for a few days of gambling, two such polarized (and quintessentially modern Canadian) personalities create a broth of a story which, in Kertes’ hands, jogs along at a satisfying pace with an engaging mix of earnestness and humour.

While Clyde seizes Atlantic City casino life by its down-at-heel and tawdry horns, Eddie moons about their hotel room and the city, alternately trying to read Cane, resenting his role as foil to his brother, and trying to fathom himself and his life. As Clyde steadily gambles his money away at the tables, Eddie’s Atlantic City experience, driven by external and internal ennui, moderates into a picaresque, and occasionally very funny, concatenation of events. There are tarts with hearts, philosophical down and outs, gaudy low-lifes who steal his brother’s hired car and Eddie’s money, and other “decent” low-lifes who get it all back at gunpoint for him, and the discovery of the true but bumpy road to love with Bunny, the lounge singer. Kertes’ handling of narrative is sure-footed (given that a certain suspension of belief is necessary to allow the dominoes to fall where they should), and his unfolding of sibling rivalry and affection is a little heavily done. By the end, I was less interested in the brothers than in the excellently realized secondary characters – the good-hearted girls and racy low-lifes.