Reviewed by Jonathan Valelly
Larkhill, Ontario, isn’t technically a real place. But that’s one of few comforts in the bleak, ugly world of Andrew F. Sullivan’s Waste, the debut novel following his well-received 2013 short story collection All We Want Is Everything.
Of course, Larkhill could be real. It’s much like any number of depressed post-industrial cities dotting southern Ontario and lurking off of forgotten highway exits across our continent. A wasteland of hollow factories, strip malls with barely an open door and motels with completely fabricated registers begins to justify the hopelessness of the book’s two protagonists, Jamie Garrison and Moses Moon. Their paths diverge chaotically after accidentally hitting a full-grown lion during a late-night ride home from work at the butcher’s shop. But fate can’t keep them away from each other—or loads of trouble.
See, in Larkhill, it’s pretty easy to get away with killing your neighbour, killing your father or killing a kid with brain damage. But there’s no getting away with accidentally killing a lion in these parts, because a cat like that’s got somebody out there who cares for it. The series of events that follow this exotic roadkill grow increasingly unbelievable—if totally engrossing—as Waste hurdles horrifically towards getting even with Jamie and Moses.
The book’s freewheeling central narrative transpires only over the course of a few days, but Sullivan reveals the landscape beneath it through extended bouts of exposition. Each character’s harsh past doesn’t so much haunt them as it does attach parasitically, slowly leeching the life out of them as they try to push through each painstaking hour. While Moses has no choice but to take his band of wannabe skinheads with him on a search for his demented mother, Jamie’s high-school memories of tormenting Connor Condon seem fresh at hand after Condon’s body is discovered in the woods.
Waste’s reader has to adopt a certain nihilism to appreciate the artfulness with which Sullivan depicts violence, sorrow and all manner of bodily fluids. It’s ceaseless. One might call his dark, unflinching style Southern Ontario Gothic if it didn’t also have a gonzo undercurrent, what with “TACO BELL” knuckle tattoos, lesbian bowling-league betrayal and a couple of thugs who resemble ZZ Top. There’s still a lot of (dark, twisted) humour and playfulness supporting the book’s gruesome heart.
Although some of the book’s events are based on real-life police reports from southern Ontario cities, Sullivan’s taste for exaggeration provides a welcome but uneasy two steps away from reality.
It would be wrong to call Waste hopeful—it’s not. But underneath all of his characters’ nasty behaviour is a flailing desire to survive, in spite of the dead bodies and dying cities surrounding them. Their extended background stories are balanced with internal thoughts about, for instance, Jamie picking a name for his daughter (“They named her Kansas because it was a flat place. A quiet place nobody ever decided to visit.”) or the finer points of Moses and friends’ half-assed white supremacist rhetoric. Despite everything they do and say that ought to make you dislike them, Sullivan suggests that they’re just trying to do their best with a life lived wholly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which only gets you so far. Waste is a rich enough read stylistically, but the actual story can make it feel like you’re watching a ’70s Italian horror movie while walking naked on a bed of coals beside an Oshawa service road. An extreme and unique experience, sure—but not for the faint of heart.
Dzanc Books | 256 pages | $15.95 | paper | ISBN 978-1-938103-40-7
‘Waste’ by Andrew F. Sullivan
Book Reviews
Larkhill, Ontario, isn’t technically a real place. But that’s one of few comforts in the bleak, ugly world of Andrew F. Sullivan’s Waste, the debut novel following his well-received 2013 short story collection All We Want Is Everything.
Of course, Larkhill could be real. It’s much like any number of depressed post-industrial cities dotting southern Ontario and lurking off of forgotten highway exits across our continent. A wasteland of hollow factories, strip malls with barely an open door and motels with completely fabricated registers begins to justify the hopelessness of the book’s two protagonists, Jamie Garrison and Moses Moon. Their paths diverge chaotically after accidentally hitting a full-grown lion during a late-night ride home from work at the butcher’s shop. But fate can’t keep them away from each other—or loads of trouble.
See, in Larkhill, it’s pretty easy to get away with killing your neighbour, killing your father or killing a kid with brain damage. But there’s no getting away with accidentally killing a lion in these parts, because a cat like that’s got somebody out there who cares for it. The series of events that follow this exotic roadkill grow increasingly unbelievable—if totally engrossing—as Waste hurdles horrifically towards getting even with Jamie and Moses.
The book’s freewheeling central narrative transpires only over the course of a few days, but Sullivan reveals the landscape beneath it through extended bouts of exposition. Each character’s harsh past doesn’t so much haunt them as it does attach parasitically, slowly leeching the life out of them as they try to push through each painstaking hour. While Moses has no choice but to take his band of wannabe skinheads with him on a search for his demented mother, Jamie’s high-school memories of tormenting Connor Condon seem fresh at hand after Condon’s body is discovered in the woods.
Waste’s reader has to adopt a certain nihilism to appreciate the artfulness with which Sullivan depicts violence, sorrow and all manner of bodily fluids. It’s ceaseless. One might call his dark, unflinching style Southern Ontario Gothic if it didn’t also have a gonzo undercurrent, what with “TACO BELL” knuckle tattoos, lesbian bowling-league betrayal and a couple of thugs who resemble ZZ Top. There’s still a lot of (dark, twisted) humour and playfulness supporting the book’s gruesome heart.
Although some of the book’s events are based on real-life police reports from southern Ontario cities, Sullivan’s taste for exaggeration provides a welcome but uneasy two steps away from reality.
It would be wrong to call Waste hopeful—it’s not. But underneath all of his characters’ nasty behaviour is a flailing desire to survive, in spite of the dead bodies and dying cities surrounding them. Their extended background stories are balanced with internal thoughts about, for instance, Jamie picking a name for his daughter (“They named her Kansas because it was a flat place. A quiet place nobody ever decided to visit.”) or the finer points of Moses and friends’ half-assed white supremacist rhetoric. Despite everything they do and say that ought to make you dislike them, Sullivan suggests that they’re just trying to do their best with a life lived wholly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which only gets you so far. Waste is a rich enough read stylistically, but the actual story can make it feel like you’re watching a ’70s Italian horror movie while walking naked on a bed of coals beside an Oshawa service road. An extreme and unique experience, sure—but not for the faint of heart.
Dzanc Books | 256 pages | $15.95 | paper | ISBN 978-1-938103-40-7