A Soaring Novel That Breaks Every RuleRobert Wiersema
National Post
September 29, 2007
THE ARCHITECTS ARE HERE
By Michael Winter Viking Canada
384 pp., $34
With his new novel, The Architects Are Here, which has been long-listed for this year's Giller Prize, Michael Winter returns to the world of Gabriel English, the authorial proxy figure who will be familiar to readers of his short fiction and his novel This All Happened. (The relationship between the author and his textual counterpart will no doubt prove a fruitful field of inquiry for doctoral dissertations.) The new novel begins with an overview of Gabriel's childhood in Corner Brook, Nfld., and documents his friendship with David Twombly, who is either mercurial and irresistible, or just downright irritating, depending on your point of view. In the opening pages we learn that David is dead, and Gabriel, now in his 40s, is looking back, vowing to "tell as much of the truth as is important" about his dear departed friend, and about the woman who came between them, Nell Tarkington. These pages also set up the central narrative question of the book: How did David Twombly die?
*************
The Big Why, Michael Winter's dazzling reinvention of the historical novel and witty faux memoir of the American artist Rockwell Kent, is being published in an unabridged audio edition by Rattling Books.
Click here to listen to a clip from The Big Why.
