Wheat, wind and not much else – that’s the popular conception of the Prairies. But rather than seeing a featureless landscape, three writers from the flatlands of Alberta and Saskatchewan find mystery, magic, and even miracles among the grain fields. Maybe it is because the land is so simple, so devoid of detail, that these writers feel obliged to embellish it with their imaginations. Whatever the reason, the tabula rasa of the Canadian Prairies is the surface on which these authors inscribe their fantasies.
Warren Cariou’s first book, The Exalted Company of Roadside Martyrs, is set among the scrubby bush of northern Saskatchewan. In that rough landscape of isolation and desolation, the two novellas of which Cariou’s book consists find a curious interlocking rhythm. One, The Shrine of the Badger King, is a comic piece worthy of W.P. Kinsella. In it, Cariou – a former resident of Meadow Lake, Sask., who now calls British Columbia home – sets a minister of government against a popular local character, Badger King.
Kenny Janvier is the hapless politician trying to win his seat again in the ultra-rural riding of Dog River. His opponent, Badger King, is his lifelong nemesis and may or may not be dead. In this hilarious parody of local constituencies and patronage, Janvier finds himself frustrated at every turn by the small-town thug (presumed dead in a car accident) whose roadside shrine has become a rallying point for disaffected residents.
In contrast, the second novella, Lazarus, is about a priest who brings a man back from the dead and then must live with the consequences. The two ministers of church and state, the twin themes of life and death, the darker story of Lazarus to the lighter tale of the Badger King – all this shows a young writer firmly in control of his material. Cariou’s debut is more than merely promising; it heralds the arrival in Canadian fiction of a fine, new storyteller.
