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Finnie Walsh

by Steven Galloway

We know from the very first sentence of Steven Galloway’s engaging debut novel, Finnie Walsh, that the title character is going to die before the book is over. How and when he dies, and what happens to him before his “absurd demise,” make for an endlessly rewarding and antic novel.

Paul Woodward, the novel’s narrator, meets Finnie in the fall of 1980, when they are both third graders. They are from opposite sides of the track in the small mill town of Portsmouth; Finnie’s father owns the mill where Paul’s father works. The boys’ shared love of hockey brings them together; friendship keep them together, and forms one of the novel’s key themes. The picaresque tale begins with the boys playing driveway hockey at the Woodwards’, while Paul’s father tries to get some sleep before his nightshift. Their play keeps him awake, and subsequently inattentive at work, he loses an arm in a sawmill accident. This triggers a domino effect that provides the basic structure for this finely paced novel.

The boys feel guilty, but Paul’s now unemployed father makes the best of his circumstances. He fills his time with a series of increasingly bizarre obsessions, such as filling a tower of mayonnaise jars with 50 goldfish, or striving to read every issue of National Geographic published since 1888. The two boys, meanwhile, argue about hockey and fend off predictions from Paul’s psychically gifted younger sister, who insists on constantly wearing a lifejacket with a whistle attached to it. There are echoes of early John Irving in such eccentric characters, and in the novel’s grotesque events: in a bizarre accident, a bonfire consumes one character’s eye after a wayward thumb disgorges it from its socket.

Galloway’s fluid narrative style effortlessly spans the 14 years from the start of the novel to the carefully constructed climax. Finnie Walsh is a terrific first novel, brilliantly conceived and inventively executed, with a powerhouse of an ending that resonates long after the book is finished. A stunning accomplishment from a young writer who deserves a close look.

 

Reviewer: Robert Allan Papinchak

Publisher: Raincoast Books

DETAILS

Price: $21.95

Page Count: 208 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 1-55192-372-6

Released: Sept.

Issue Date: 2000-9

Categories: Fiction: Novels

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