I write to you regarding Joan Sullivan’s Dec. 1 mostly positive review of Larry Mathew’s novel, “An Exile’s Perfect Letter,” a novel set in our very own St. John’s and written by a citizen of our fair city.
I was also enticed by another seemingly positive review of the same novel, in the local downtown monthly newspaper, to buy the book given a hint in that review of the writer speaking some of his own truth in this novel and that another local writer of three names fame was said to be “skewered” in Mathew’s novel; my interest was thus piqued, I do confess.
However, I’m very surprised Sullivan could find anything positive to say about this novel.
Now, I’m no literary critic but I do read a lot and have since my teens and into my now 6th decade; fiction mostly, some literary non-fiction and some, selected online journalism.
But I found Mathew’s novel and main character to be, at best, sexist (any woman mentioned in the story was critiqued by her physical appearance) and a throwback to the long-gone 1970s-early 80’s male and all he did not know then.
I thought the writer and main character seemed full of sour grapes in terms of perhaps students of the writer and main character who did much better in their writing and arts careers than the writer/main character which seems irksome to both writer and character.
Both are insulting to St. John’s and the writer’s university employer of some 30 years which is more sour grapes, in my opinion, as perhaps, real life ambitions were not met with reality.
The use of the vernacular of ‘wha’?’ as sentence punctuation, by an RNC officer, over and over again, did not ring true to this reader at all and seemed most amateurish especially as the writer taught creative writing at our university.
And as for the sub-plot lines: the dead body, the death a of a friend, the desperate couple’s jaunt to St. Pierre (and the insults hurled at that little part of France by writer and character), the annoying CFA neighbour, and the pompous friend who comes to St. John’s to write about N.L. culture and who the writer and character find questionable as a critic (not to mention our culture) and who then run out of things to show the visitor to St. John’s once the trip to Signal Hill is done is, well, just insulting to St. John’s and its inhabitants.
This novel, of just over 200 pages with way too many sub-plot lines, smells like something gone bad and written by a bitter, unhappy person, moving on in years, as are we all (writer and I are of similar age), is passed off as satire I gather, but is, in my opinion as an avid reader, simply a bad, poorly written and conceptualized book with an unoriginal title but rather eye-catching cover art.
PG Chaulk
St. John’s