Author has fun with serious business of local real estate
This novel makes you laugh and think at the same time
Charles Demers, born in 1980, already has an impressive list of public accomplishments. The same year (2009) that he published his well-received first novel, Prescription Errors, he also launched a brilliant collection of essays, Vancouver Special. He has since then published another book of comic reflections, The Horrors and a quirky book on fatherhood (The Dad Dialogues) co-written with former poet laureate George Bowering. He appears frequently on CBC Radio’s “The Debaters,” and has recently released a comedy album “Fatherland.”
Demers has also founded a new imprint, Robin’s Egg Books, devoted to publishing the works of other comic authors. Further, he frequently deploys his comic talents as master of ceremonies for events benefiting such progressive organizations as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. All this is a bit alarming for those of us who cannot match his productivity or manic energy, and hard to forgive for older writers and performers who are daunted by his youth and talent.
In his latest book, Property Values, Demers sets his story in the Lower Mainland with a plot that links drug gang violence to another local crime scene, the insane bubble that has driven up real estate costs beyond human comprehension and beyond the ability of anyone outside the fabled one per cent to afford.
His hapless protagonist, Scott Clark, decides that he will drive down the value of the home by staging a fake drive-by shooting at his address. (The reasons he wants to accomplish this counterintuitive goal are complicated, and hilarious.) The action of the book follows from this fateful decision and includes confrontations with outlaw motorcycle gang members and the leadership of several drug dealing gangs, as well as a tenderly portrayed mini-romance between Scott and a local crime reporter. The action includes moments of violence, the antic pleasures of male bonding among Scott and his friends and reflections on racism and masculinity, but the tone, despite the fraught topics covered, is never over-earnest or hectoring. Although he identifies as a serious left-winger, Demers seems immune to the boring and humorless discourse that characterizes so much of the prose generated on the left. This is a book that will make you laugh, and make you think. Highly recommended.