People Park

by Pasha Malla

Overview

It's the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrator Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes together for the event, we meet an unforgettable cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate loners. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven's illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of.

People Park is a tour de force of eerily prescient, grotesque, and hilarious observation and a narrative of gripping, unrelenting suspense. Malla writes as if the twin demons of Stephen King and Flannery O'Connor were resting on his shoulders. You've never read anything quite like People Park.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593765392
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	03/11/2014
Pages:	488
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Pasha Malla is the author of five works of poetry and fiction, including the story collection The Withdrawal Method and the novel People Park. His fiction has won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Trillium Book Prize, an Arthur Ellis Award and several National Magazine awards. It has also been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Pasha Malla lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

11/04/2013
Reviewed by Owen King. If there is one surefire audience for Pasha Malla’s massive, messy, entertaining, funny, fatiguing novel People Park, it can be found among those fiction lovers who also have a taste for amateur cartography. The author’s descriptions of the imaginary island city where his story is set are so thorough and zonate that any reader worth her salt ought, when finished, be able to find her way around town—from UOT (Upper Olde Towne) to LOT (Lower Olde Towne), Knock Street, Topside Drive, Mount Mustela, People Park, and a dozen other scattered locations—without a local guide. Across Malla’s painstakingly-created panorama we follow the movements of a lengthy roster of characters over the course of a long weekend, the great occasion of which is the “Silver Jubilee” of People Park, a green space that was created by the controversial razing of a housing project. These characters include, among others, Pearl, a former basketball star, arrived home with mixed feelings in the company of her far-less-than-perfect family; Pop, an amusingly deranged activist who resides in a land-bound houseboat; tough and frustrating Adine, who spends a major portion of the novel literally in the dark, blinded by a pair of opaque goggles that she has donned for artistic reasons; her tragic, disturbed brother Sam, who eventually does something terrible to himself with a microwave; and, most elaborately, multiple members of the New Fraternal League of Men (NFLM), a khaki-wearing, quasi-police force that also programs a talk show called Salami Talk. Acting upon them all is Raven, a maleficent, track-suited magician, whose enchantment vaporizes the bridge to the mainland and sets the stage for disaster. If the above sounds like a lot, let me tell you, that’s not a quarter of it. Malla is a fabulously gifted writer and People Park showcases all of his gifts. The various vernaculars spoken by the characters are a consistent delight, with particular credit being awarded to the lingo of the NFLM. His descriptions of the devastation that serves as a backdrop to much of the novel’s second half are very fine—the rising floodwaters around a hilltop “evoked a kneecap jutting from a filling tub.” Meanwhile, the novel’s most atypical section is also its best, an unsparing portrait of Sam and Adine’s horrific childhood in the housing project that was leveled to make way for the titular park. This contained story is heartbreaking. Malla can do everything well, but that’s also the drawback of People Park: he’s determined to do just that—i.e., everything. The cast is ultimately so large and the chaos that ensues so massive that as the characters hurry, or are swept, from one section of the city to another, and another, and another, they lose definition. This is meant to serve as a caution; it shouldn’t obscure the numerous pleasures of Malla’s setup or his considerable talent. People Park is a sopping hoagie of a novel: well worth it if you have the appetite, but be careful when you eat it. There’s stuff falling out all over the place. Owen King is the author of three books, including, most recently, Double Feature (Scribner). His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Fairy Tale Review, One Story, Paste Magazine, and Prairie Schooner, among others.

Publishers Weekly

"Malla writes as if the twin demons of Stephen King and Flannery O'Connor were resting on his shoulders. You've never read anything quite like People Park."—Amazon.ca Best Books of 2012

“A polished, confident storyteller… An invigorating mix of seriousness, humor, and candor.” —Toronto Star

“Like David Foster Wallace and Rick Moody, Malla often asks painful questions, revealing equally painful truths.” —Quill & Quire

“An astonishing and bizarre mix… Pasha Malla is an impressive young voice that gives one hope for a future of new Canadian writing talent.” —Globe and Mail

“Malla’s technical skills are…reminiscent of Munro… His handling of society’s unfortunates is very Barbara Gowdy… Buy The Withdrawal Method.” —Vue Weekly

“Pasha Malla’s remarkable debut collection The Withdrawal Method is a sign (or warning) for things to come.” —The Coast

“Weird and wild and wonderful. Funny, too. Pasha Malla has a deft tough.” —David Bergen, author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize–wining The Time In Between

“Life is anything but ordinary in the hands of this gifted writer.” —Vancouver Sun

“When I got to the last page, I wanted to flip the thing over and start right back at the beginning. I can't think of a better testament to the pleasure of reading a novel.” —AV Club

“People Park is a zany and entertaining yarn . . . more than a worthy followup to The Withdrawal Method; it's a merry microcosm.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“People Park is an ambitious and complex novel, impressively rendered and fantastic to read.’ —National Post

“People Park is reminiscent of Gary Shteyngart or George Saunders . . . vividly imagined . . .” —Globe and Mail

“Written in breathless prose, it's oddball fun, and Malla proves himself as a writer who never takes the easy way out.” —National Post

“[People Park] unfolds a unique and fully realized fictional universe in which the author explores themes of displacement, isolation, and reunification with flashes of dark humour.” —Quill and Quire

“... an imaginative feat . . .” —Georgia Straight

“... every sentence [is] a thrill ... [in People Park] we get a frightening picture of ourselves.” —Montreal Gazette

“The novel is a cacophony of comedy and heartbreak, magical realism and satiric wit, made melodically whole through Malla's deft prose.” —Briarpatch Magazine

From the Publisher