As you read this, I’m probably on a treadmill watching MTV.  Okay, the likelihood that I’m on a treadmill at this moment is actually pretty slim.  But it is sadly true that I am almost certainly, unapologetically, watching MTV’s Canadian affiliate.  With relish.

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There were temples at both ends of the main dirt road in town. One was an enormous stone complex with eight massive towers. It stood at the far end and through its gates people streamed in their colourful saris, their combed moustaches, carrying bags of marigolds and coconuts, coming out with their dark foreheads dotted red or yellow or streaked white. Some continued down the road in their bare feet along the hot cracked sidewalk. At the opposite end, perhaps a kilometer or so towards the hills, the road disappeared into gravel and grass on its way to a massive dark-stoned pavilion that housed a sixteen-foot statue of Nandi the Bull. Behind the pavilion, stone steps wound up the dry hill and disappeared behind sandy boulders. Above this all, the clouds sat quietly in the blue sky as if proof some lid had been arched and sealed over the whole thing. The tall grass stood still against the columns of the ruins and the soft hooves of cows thumped gently as they inched their noses forward to new grass.

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Pelayo rolled his eyes at Elisenda.  What did she know about it?  He told her as much.  He was driving their Dodge pickup along Interstate 80.  A curl of orange flame was emblazoned on both sides of their pale blue ride.  He cast a glance out of their rearview mirror at the sun as it set behind them.  For the moment he was forced to squint against the sand as it blew in from off the desert in both directions. 

 

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Though your neighbourhood English professor may hesitate to admit it, there are some novels that, for all their awards and rave reviews (the phrase “internationally acclaimed” comes to mind) are simply not that readable, nor are they highly read (think Finnegans Wake, or Moby Dick). Something about the first page, even the first sentence, discourages (frightens? warns?) the average reader from continuing much further. Then there are those underground, unheard of novels that, almost as soon as you read the first page, make you want to find a chair and use it. A chair with big arms, a headrest and hopefully, an ottoman in close proximity. Homing, winner of the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award at the Atlantic Book Awards this May, is undoubtedly one of these books.

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