A raunchy, funny, coming-of-age story
For the Love of Mary, the new novel from Vancouver writer Christopher Meade, deftly captures the uncertainties and tensions of being a teenage boy to alternately hilarious and heartbreaking effect.
It’s a winning coming-of-age story that seems curiously, and wonderfully, out of step with the contemporary world.
The same could be said about Parksville, where the novel is set. A normally peaceful small town, “99.99 per cent AngloSaxon white,” a rift develops in the summer of 1996, when Passion Lord Church of God begins to lose parishioners to the neighbouring new super church, Church of the Lord’s Creation, which has its own youth group, a rock band and an air hockey table in the basement.
Fifteen-year-old Jacob is caught in the middle, with his mother taking charge of their church’s fate at almost the same moment he develops a crush on Mary, whose father is the minister at the interloping house of worship.
Jacob spends most of his life stuck in the middle — or completely on the outside. Mary’s got a boyfriend, Glenn, the youth pastor at the rival church.
His older sister has a series of boy- friends, bad boys all. Heck, even his best friend Moss, he of the weight problem and the bright orange Cheetos-stained fingers, has a girlfriend.
Meanwhile, Pia has a crush on Jacob, which Mary is facilitating, and which leads to a soul-crushing summer job at the local convenience store (it’s a long story, involving oral sex in a car wash).
And then there are his parents: why is his father building a man-cave in the garage, with a hidden fridge for all the treats his wife — Jacob’s mother — won’t allow him?
This isn’t a realistic story, but it’s not meant to be; the characters bear little resemblance to real teenagers, but they’re not supposed to
Stylistically and tonally, For the Love of Mary is reminiscent of nothing quite so much as the teen comedies of the mid-1980s, spiritual kin to the movies of John Hughes.
This isn’t a realistic story, but it’s not meant to be; the characters bear little resemblance to real teenagers, but they’re not supposed to, anymore than Jon Cryer’s Duckie from Pretty in Pink resembles a typical teen from 1986.
The novel is a stylized, overstuffed romp, with a raunchy surface and a heart just under its sleeve. It’s charming and winning, and a genuine reading pleasure, perfect for a summer afternoon. Robert Wiersema’s latest book is Black Feathers.