: Tim Bowling
: The Marvels of Youth
: Buckrider Books
: 9781989496954
: 1
: CHF 5.10
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 242
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

Set in the short window between the release of the movieJaws and the first Star Wars movie,The Marvels of Youth is both a paean to the magic of a child's imagination and a compelling mystery. When Sean learns of the death of the owner of the comic bookstore in the small town along the shores of the Fraser River that he grew up in, he is transported back in his memory to a fateful year, when he stumbled upon an affair that could ignite the tensions of his working-class town. As the mystery unfolds, Bowling paints a rich picture of life in a fishing town, of striking workers and hard choices alongside the moments of awe and unexpected joy that a child faces at the edge of adulthood. Filled with unforgettable characters and beautifully layered storytellingThe Marvels of Youth is a sweeping, glimmering tale, as mesmerizing as the river that flows through it.

Chapter 2


The rain didn’t let up for weeks. It beat an irregular rhythm on the rooftops and in the rusted beds of wheelbarrows and on the glistening oil drums standing like menhirs in the many unkempt tall grassy places around our neighbourhood. Even the great blue herons seemed weighted down with the moisture, flying so low over the town that I feared they’d smash into the telephone poles or get tangled in the wires. Normally, I didn’t mind the rain; like most children everywhere, I simply existed in the weather without question, having more important matters on my mind, such as how much extra money I could earn collecting beer and pop bottles along the muddy riverbank at low tide to help finance my comic collecting habit.

Also – and I admit this now with some regret, thinking of all those wasted hours – I fretted about where I could play road hockey.

No doubt this problem seems an antiquated one in today’s sedentary digital culture, but in the 1970s, even television provided limited viewing for children. Cartoons ran on Saturdays, and there were some early morning kids’ shows during the week, but the rest of the time we had only reruns of ’50s and ’60s shows to watch, and they didn’t always appeal. Opie’s cuteness and Gilligan’s idiocy would entertain for only so long, and inevitably the great outdoors became more attractive, especially when you could slap a tennis ball past your friend standing in the net with just a baseball glove and one of my older brother’s broken goalie sticks for additional defence.

In the fall, when it got dark at 4:00 p.m., we played road hockey for hours wherever we could find a light source. Usually that meant under a dim streetlamp or under the freight entrance light at the back of our town’s tallest building, the grain elevator of the co-op store. Darkness we could handle, but rain was more of a challenge. We did try to play in it, of course, but the fun didn’t last, so we mostly waited out the rainiest times of the year.

That October, however, wore our patience thin, which meant we had to improvise. After being kicked out of an apartment building’s undercover parking compound, Jay and I came upon the brilliant idea – brilliant because it was so obvious – to take shots inside one of my neighbourhood’s many derelict buildings.

You see, I grew up in a period of economic decline in a town filled with ruins. Within a five-minute walk from my house, I could enter any of six condemned Edwardian houses, a boarded-up movie theatre, a half-block row of empty stores and an abandoned vegetable canning factory the length of a football field. Or if I preferred smaller shelters, I had my pick of rotting fish boats on the banks of the river, including a ghostly sternwheeler right out ofThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<