First Fiction Fridays: Max’s Folly

What:Max’s Folly (Guernica Editions, 2016)Who:Bill Turpin has worked most of his career as a journalist, first in Montreal and more recently Halifax, but has also afflicted government and the communications world. He is currently living off his wits while studying to be a gadfly. Max’s Folly is his first novel.Why you need to read this now:Max, a journalist who has sustained a long career by using his wits, is confronted with a succession of devastating losses: his job, the death of his wife, and—so he’s been told—his memory. But Max knows there’s nothing wrong with his memory. He’s a lifelong time-traveller and his supposed memory lapses are actually bad “jumps”. When it seems he is about to lose his freedom to an assisted living home, Max decides on one last journey—a search in time-past for his late wife.The trouble is, Max can’t control the journey and it becomes a series of unpredictable “time-jumps”. On those occasions when he finds his wife, he can’t figure out how to stay in the moment, and she slips away. Sometimes, without warning, he is jolted back into the present, where he is awaited by the staff at the assisted-living home, a hostile grocery-store security guard and a faithful guru.Bill Turpin, an ex-journalist and communications director, who has been a faithful defender of truth and freedom of the press, draws on his past experiences to explore the world of journalism, and to bring to light the lost art of old fashioned newspapering.Even if you’re not a fan of journalism, Max’s Folly will draw you in. It’s a thrilling journey that delves into questions of love, loss, and memory, and that’s replete with dark humour and wise-cracking characters.Max’s Folly is a debut novel that’s original, hilarious, casually profane and above all, heartfelt.X plus Y:It’s like the clever, audacious prose of Nicholson Baker’s The Fermata with the unique poignancy and humour of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.