Quirky, feel-good, small-town fun edition
The sitcom Schitt’s Creek followed a delightfully quirky cast of characters in a small town. The show featured sharp writing, over-the-top characters (Moira Rose, anyone?), and a supporting cast of loveable and eccentric neighbourhood oddballs. Schitt’s Creek was an audience and critic’s favourite, winning nine Emmy awards in 2020 for the show’s final season.
If you were to take the fun and heart of Schitt’s Creek and throw it into Canada’s far north, you might end up with something like Northern Bull. Set on a freezing cold January day in Yellowknife, this debut novel from Michelle Swallow follows a couple of neighbours—and their circle of outlandish and endearing friends and community members—as they bumble along from one misadventure to the next.
There’s Jacques, a currently unemployed fisherman who is trying to fix up his ramshackle house so that he doesn’t get evicted. There’s his next-door neighbourhood Maggie, who has taken the day off work to pursue her latest plan to beat the January blues (after already trying broomball, belly dancing, and hot yoga): she is going to write a spicy short story to perform at the community burlesque show that evening. There’s Craig, the local hothead who accuses Jacques of stealing Craig’s prized moose head and threatens to blow up his house—when Craig’s not trying to get his (decidedly unorthodox) aurora tourism business off the ground, that is.
Jacques and Maggie set off together to find the moose head and save Jacques’s house and make it in time to the burlesque show that evening. And just like Schitt’s Creek is populated with weird and wonderful inhabitants, Northern Bull’s version of Yellowknife features its own charming weirdos: Vic, who lives with his parents and is working to become Yellowknife’s “premier professional erotic dancer”; Stick and Pringles, the beautiful dancers who show up in hopes of an afterparty and offer genuinely good advice; Chad, the Tinder date who turns to have slightly misrepresented himself. Like Schitt’s Creek, Northern Bull will leave you laughing, shaking your head in disbelief at the crazy shenanigans our protagonists get themselves into, and feeling a burst of energy and fun. What a way to beat the January blues!
* * *
Thank you to Kelsey Attard at Freehand Books for sharing Northern Bull with us! Find a copy here on All Lit Up, or from your local independent bookseller.
