The Iconoclasts Journal (Trade Paper)

Description

Spooked by some ball lightning on his wedding night, repressed young Catholic Griffith Smolders interprets this as a sign and abandons his conjugal responsibilities by escaping through the window, enduring a series of misadventures along the way involving, among others, con men, murderesses, shipwrecks, and autodidact biologist hermits. Giving chase, his betrothed, Avice Drinkwater, finally runs Grif aground in a tiny island community, and prepares to exact her revenge.Set in the rough-and-tumble late nineteenth century backwoods,The Iconoclasts Journalis wildly kinetic, a madcap picaresque and comic anti-romance by one of the most inventive writers at work today.Praise forThe Iconoclasts JournalTerry Griggss second novel [The Iconoclasts Journal] is as exuberantly inventive, verbally juiced up and sexually outrageous as her first,The Lusty Manand more pointedly iconoclastic.The language, the verbal fireworks, the apparently limitless stream of image and metaphorstartling, heady, hilariousdo it all.The Globe and Mailsmashes apart Victorian society (and modern society by extension) and rebuilds it as a Swiftian fantasy, raucous asHuckleberry Finnand nearly as bizarre asAlice in Wonderlandintensely intoxicating and bestowing delicious feelings of hallucination.Quill & QuireTerry GriggssThe Iconoclasts Journalcompels thoughts, things, places, and faces to populate its pages with their hidden stories: too outrageous to be believed yet too convincing to be doubted, and universally successful in exposing the truth, tragedy, and humor within. Foreword Reviews(starred review)[Grif] stumbles, quite literally, into one adventure after another, treating each with bewilderment and hope strongly picaresque, in the irreverent manner of ApuleiusThe Golden Ass The humor is punctuated by moments as tragic as they are comic.Arkansas InternationalTerry Griggs has just immortalized the runaway bridegroom. Shes a wildly inventive storyteller, gifted with a superb turn of phrase.The Montreal GazetteThis book is a carnival, filled with freaks and wonders. The narrative is preposterous, the characters fabulous, drawn sharper than life, coloured more brightly, yet after you put the book down, you see them everywhere.The Ottawa CitizenThe strangeness of Griggss novel is matched by its panache. She takes the tall tales of rural Ontario and turns them into a story that moves with the speed and certitude of a bullet. [The Iconoclasts Journal] has the hilarity of a Jack Hodgins novel and the inquisitive menace of the Melville who wroteThe Confidence-ManandMoby Dick. Its definitive proof that fiction about the Victorian bush doesnt have to be stodgy, dull, or conventional. For those who enjoy a good smart cock-and-bull story, [The Iconoclasts Journal] is a must-read.Jack Illingwortha rollicking romp and frivolously fantastical; its not heavy, but heavenly.The Hamilton Spectatornever should have gone out of print . . . the novel now has a home worthy of it.David Worsley,49th Shelf