It is rare that a book cover truly captures the essence of the book itself. But Morley Torgov’s Stickler and Me pretty much scores perfectly. The cover features a teenage boy and his grandfather, both with their arms crossed angrily, glaring archly at one another across the hood of a Buick. The painting style, the 1950s clothing (Gramps wears a polka-dot bow tie; the kid a short-sleeved red check shirt), and exaggerated poses call to mind Norman Rockwell kitsch: obvious, stale, and depressingly mediocre.

The author of many books, including the children’s novel The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick (perhaps better known for its movie adaptation), Torgov, a lawyer in Toronto, is also a two-time winner of the Leacock Award for humour. But his new period novel, about a 13-year-old boy thrown together for a summer with his crusty grandfather, offers little appreciable mirth, and the tired stock characters seem plucked from a 1950s radio drama or one of CBC’s dire family serials, say Road to Avonlea or Wind at My Back.

Neglected by his divorced parents, Ben elects to spend the summer with his taciturn, perfectionist grandfather Ira Lamport, whom he scarcely knows. Ostensibly, Ben is lonely, fed up with his absentee parents, and eager to get to know some other member of his family. The year is 1962. Arriving in the small Ontario town of Port Sanford where his grandfather is a prominent lawyer, Ben wastes no time irritating Gramps by blasting Bob Dylan. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of the novel is its lacklustre voice. It’s narrated in the first person by Ben, but his actions, reactions, speech, and thoughts don’t seem at all like those of a kid. It reads more like someone trying to remember what it was like to be a teenager. Consider his ruminations on the state of his life: “As far as I was concerned, you didn’t have to look far to see how right Bob Dylan was. All you had to do was look at my own parents. Spending money – tons of it – on lawyers to get their divorce. Arguing for hours over whether this silver platter or that crystal vase belonged to him or to her. Hating instead of loving. And having the nerve to make rules and regulations about my life when, all the time, it seemed to me that they had no idea how to rule and regulate their own lives.”

Not only does the writing here lack verve, but I am doubtful a young teenager would express himself in this measured way. Ben has little real personality and drive, and seems to exist in the novel only to spar verbally with his grandfather. There’s not a lot else for him to do.

The novel’s thin plot issues from one of Gramps’s cases gone awry. The wealthy but fickle dowager Rebecca O’Hearn is on her deathbed and wants to change her will once again. She dictates her wishes to Gramps, but before he can drive the new will over to be signed, she dies. Gramps is thrown into a fit of self-reproach because now most of her estate will go to her wastrel niece and nephews rather than worthy charities. Gramps’s dark mood causes him to snap at his abrasively persistent grandson, ‘‘A thirteen-year-old’s got to know his place,” and the following dialogue ensues.
Now I was the one who was angry. “My place? My place? My place is at your place. And I’m your flesh and blood, at least that’s what Mom said to me when I told her I wasn’t sure about spending the summer here in Port Sanford. I’m no happier being here than you are having me here. But the least we can do is talk to each other.”

“That’s no way to talk to a person who’s giving you a roof over your head and three meals a day!”

“You really are what my dad said you are – a cold fish!”

“That’s a lie!” Gramps yelled, “A damn lie!”

“Then prove you’re not. Why’re you so upset about Mrs O’Hearn’s death?”

Torgov’s dialogue often has the overwrought quality of a period melodrama or radio play. Even young Ben tends to talk in unrealistically long, grammatical sentences, embellished with plenty of clauses and phrases. Turns out that what’s really tormenting Gramps is O’Hearn’s instruction that her beloved chihuahua Josh be put down after her death. Naturally, Gramps, like all good animal-lovers, snaps. In the middle of the night, he wakes Ben, grabs the dog, and the three of them leave town in his Buick.

At this juncture I was hopeful: I imagined an absurd road trip in which Gramps is willing to risk everything to save poor Josh from the vet’s hypodermic. Alas, Gramps is just generally fed up – not on any deranged crusade – and wants to visit his secret girlfriend in Toronto. Here, at the novel’s mid point, Torgov fractures his structure and introduces two new point-of-view characters – a vengeful sheriff and the local chief of police, who start a manhunt for Gramps, convinced he’s absconding with the widow O’Hearn’s fortune. This implausible turn of events doesn’t make a lot of sense and so is more irritating than amusing, as it forces us to spend time with characters we don’t care about, acting out recycled television scenarios.

As for humour, I wish I could say I laughed or even smiled. But the situations and dialogue are too stale. When Ben sees Gramps admire a tractor at the CNE he wisecracks: “‘Did your dad allow you to borrow the family tractor whenever you had a date?’ I said.

“Grandfather looked at me sternly. ‘I suppose you think that’s funny?’

“‘I’m sorry you’re not amused,’ I said, ‘but the truth is, a tractor is nothing but a horse with four wheels.’”

Stickler and Me has no spark of childhood or fun in it. The story moves along mostly through lengthy dialogues between Ben and various characters, and the few actual events – the road trip, a misadventure at the dog show at the CNE – are only minimally engaging. Reading the book is a bit like enduring a diabolically long anecdote from a distant relation: in the end, you just tune out.