Tim Bowling, The Paperboy's Winter
The short version: Tim Bowling's 2003 The Paperboy's Winter is a gorgeous novel. For anyone able to identify with either of its narrators, in particular, it's classic realist fiction in the very best sense. Truly, you'll struggle to find better if you're looking to visit 1970s boyhood on BC's west coast, especially if you're prepared to think about how it is that boys grow into men (bonus points if you're from a 1970s or 80s working-class background!). As Bowling wrote in his poem "Childhood," from the volume Circa Nineteen Hundred and Grief , his work speaks very clearly to "men and women / of certain years who. having left prints on the sand, / remember the feeling / of castles in their fingers." If those lines speak to you at all, seek out this novel, and you'll find a bit of a treasure. The longer version, which as a review is honestly kind of a mess: Time is a river, of course, as we've been telling each other since at ...
