A rollicking ride with sadists
Novel over the top in almost all ways, but somehow it works
Readers of Waste, Andrew F. Sullivan’s gruesomely entertaining debut novel, will never listen to Anne Murray’s “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” the same way again. Not after the menacing Brothers Vine — two of the more sadistic characters in Sullivan’s rogues’ gallery of sadists — deliver their frightening rendition of the kiddies’ classic.
Then again, in Sullivan’s hands, Dr Seuss, The Neverending Story and The Wizard of Oz aren’t safe either. The latter casts a long shadow over Waste, though Sullivan’s Oz proves a far more frightening place.
Jamie Garrison — the ostensible Dorothy of this story — is in a rut: he’s stuck in a dead-end job in a dead-end city at the close of a dead-end decade. He just wants to do right by his estranged daughter, Kansas.
But bad as things are, they can always get worse. And for Jamie, they certainly do.
Driving home one night in the company of pseudoskinhead and butcher shop co-worker Moses Moon, who also has a touch of Dorothy in him — and a little of the Scarecrow and Tin Man, too — Jamie runs down an honest-to-goodness lion, with a mane “long and tangled” and paws that “could have suffocated Jamie in his sleep.”
Little do the men know that the beast belongs to the Wizard-like Astor Crane, crime lord of Larkhill, Ont. — a stand-in for the author’s native Oshawa — who keeps himself hidden away in the penthouse suite of a rundown hotel.
From there, Astor sends forth the Brothers Vine, a pair of ZZ Top-looking thugs with a penchant for hobbling their victims with power drills.
The Vines have two tasks: find out who killed the lion and, more importantly, locate Astor’s ex-girlfriend, Destinii, who may or may not look like Moses Moon’s missing mother, Elvira.
The ensuing cat-and-mouse through the crumbling streets of Larkhill — with James alternately trying to find and evade the Vines, and Moses and his vicious wannabe neo-Nazis searching for Elvira — reads like a Keystone caper.
Waste is over-the-top in almost every way. The violence is Tarantino-esque, the characters’ lives so downtrodden they make Raymond Carver’s folks look bubbly, and the humour so dark not even the Petawatt Laser could prick it.
And yet Sullivan — wizard that he is — makes it all work. Waste is a rollicking, offensive and genuinely enjoyable ride. Stephen Finucan is a novelist and short story writer. He lives in Toronto.