The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
There was a time, in my aspiring CBC reporter early twenties, when I would have loved this book.
“At last!” I would have exclaimed out loud in the McAlister Place Coles. “A comic novel about Parliament! Why hasn’t someone written this before?!”
A Liberal Party political aide and grammar pedant, agrees to manage the no-hope political campaign of a reluctant engineer who is also a grammar pedant. They spend much of the book correcting each other’s speech as events take an unexpected turn.
While it’s a pleasant enough read, there are few false notes in the book that are hard to overlook. For one, I don’t believe CBC radio one would interrupt its regular programming to report on a breaking sex scandal. I also don’t believe the scandal would be enough to bring down a government minister because, as it was presented in the book, it in no way appeared to impede this person from doing his job.
Today, being less of a political nerd than I used to be, I merely liked the book.
Still, I hear it’s being developed by the CBC as a miniseries and I actually that, if it’s done well, would be a better format for the story and I’d probably watch it.
January 2, 2013 at 11:53 am
Pretty sure that Coles is still there. At least it was 5 years ago.
January 2, 2013 at 11:56 am
It’s been about a year since I was last in that mall but I’m sure it’s there as well. I was just going for the book buying experience in a small town pre-Chatpers vibe.