Customer Reviews

Better Than Life

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Better Than Life is a great read for anyone who has a family that's less than perfect. The Connar family is both hilarious and realistic as it prepares for Min's 90th birthday party. Aubrey, the son living at home with Min, has to contend with her excentricities and tendency to 'die' every once in a while.

The small town they live in is filled with characters and secrets and stories that will engage the reader as the story progresses to the big birthday party. Jurgen Gothe sums it up very well on the back cover:

"What could be better than this? The finer points of Belgian doughnuts, fried chicken wars, papier-maché squirrels; small town intrigue, outrage and inter-municipal plottery; great convoluted characters and relationships, not a little looniness and quite a lot of real pain. Part colour cartoon, part small town soap opera, part neurosis case book. Sum total: big time winner."

You live in a hick Canadian town that's all atwitter because a man named Bob showed up one day without warning. Everybody calls Bob "Jesus" behind his back because, well, he looks and acts like Jesus, bringing animals back from the dead, dramatically changing people's lives for the better with just a few well-chosen words and, of course, making the local minister nervous.

If that's not enough to worry about, you're a recovering drunk and you live with your 89-year-old drama-queen mother who feigns death now and again to keep you attentive. She's planning a huge wing ding in the town's park for her upcoming birthday, inviting relatives from everywhere, including Ireland, as well as your siblings, whom you hate.

Meanwhile, your twin brothers with whom you haven't spoken in decades live in a neighboring hick town, which is planning a huge celebration of its own on the same day as the birthday bash.

As "Better than Life" rollicks and rolls along, building suspense with characters who just might be progeny of an accidental merging of hallucinations of Tom Robbins and Flannery O'Connor, you, also feeling a deep dread from Bob's apparent special interest in you, start wondering if it would hurt much to hop off the wagon, just for a spell.

Margaret Gunning has given us a mystery-suspense novel that's leavened with her constant sardonic and often gut-splitting wit. Her humor comes through so naturally that while it can be biting and cynical it never seems contrived and is more often than not self-deprecating.