14. The Luck of Ginger Coffey

I picked this one up from a free box because I had some notion that it is a Canadian/anglo Montreal classic.  Other than that, I really didn't know much about it.

Ginger Coffey is an Irish immigrant to Canada with his wife and daughter in the early 50s. As the book starts, he is approaching a life crisis. He was supposed to be a freelance field sales agent for Irish whiskeys and clothes, but had run out of clients and now almost money.  Veronica, his wife is utterly finished with his promises and bluster and when she learns that he spent the $600 she had put aside for a return trip to Ireland, she decides to leave him altogether. There is also a third party in the mix, generous and gregarious Canadian Gerry Grosvener, who at first seems to support the family but then reveals himself to be in love with Veronica.  The story follows Ginger as his life falls apart and he tries to hold it together.

At this stage, it is hard to ignore that this is another book about a flawed, self-involved white male whose challenges are almost entirely internal.  The economy was pretty good at this point and there are plenty of jobs available for him, yet he is all up in his head because they don't fit into who he thinks he should be.  He is 39 and that spectre of life failure is real, but at the same time, does it really take an entire book for the dude to realize that he is responsible for his own destiny and should stop fucking around with childish hopes and dreams and just start making a steady income and set up a dependable situation for his wife and daughter?

It is well-written and quite funny.  The cast of side characters and the locales are great as well.  Also very revealing how sidelined Quebecois culture is.  There are a few french characters, most of them being brutal cops and jailers and basically sidelined as the slightest hint of decoration on what is otherwise all very anglo-saxon, even down to the food in the restaurants.  I think this is the world that today's dying out angryphones remember and miss.  Despite the "erasure" of the french, it does paint a picture of a pretty diverse and rough-edged Montreal which seemed fun as hell (relatively speaking for the early '50s).

So an enjoyable read with an archaic mission. One could argue that the reification of the flawed white male is not only still with us, but actually having a dark and ugly resurgence with the victim narrative of  today's authoritarian rise. Even without the forced political interpretation, I was generally a bit frustrated with Ginger as a protagonist.  Despite that, I had a good time reading the book.