Trevor Cole is emerging as a master of obsessive-delusional-neurotic-tragicomic fiction. His two novels, Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life (which was shortlisted for a 2004 Governor General’s Award for Fiction) and his latest, The Fearsome Particles, both told from the points of view of obsessive and delusional people, are distressing and sometimes cringe-making funny, their humour akin to that of David Brent trying to assert his power in the BBC TV series The Office. Cole’s skill at evoking this humour suggests that he himself is quiveringly attuned to the tiny shudders—say, an inexplicable bid in a game of cards—that suggest the life-threatening fault lines in people’s lives. And Cole’s prose is so confident, compassionate and clear that it draws out that neurotic admission: I wish I’d written that.
The Fearsome Particles is very much of our era and the struggle for homeland security. Its pivotal character is Kyle...
Val Ross, deputy Comment editor of The Globe and Mail, is a former arts editor of Maclean’s magazine and has covered books and the publishing industry for the Globe.
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