Practical Jean

June 20, 2011
In his U.S. debut, Canadian novelist Cole delivers a cagey satirical noir featuring a deranged killer as low-key and matter-of-fact as any of Jim Thompson's introspective monsters. Jean Vale Horemarsh, from the fictional "bedroom community" of Kotemee, is a middle-aged wife and potter/sculptor who, after three months of caring for her dying mother, arrives at the perverse belief that death is the ultimate liberation for those closest to her. After discovering that her husband is having an affair with her friend Louise, Jean moves in with another friend, Natalie. She then sets in motion her "practical" theory of death by giving three of her friends, including Natalie, a "Last Poem." Then, to spare them from old age or a drab life, she slays them all. Wicked humor glints kitchen-knife bright as the unhinged Jean blithely traverses the suburbs dispensing her most intimate friends. An impromptu trip to New York's Finger Lakes region, where she surprises a "long-lost friend," finds the gory mayhem unravelingâand Jean as well; "it all went crappy," we're told. Crime fiction fans who hang on long enough to grasp the slow burn of Jean's muted irrationality, and the spot-on lampoon of modern suburban life, will reap Cole's wonderfully bitter fruits.

September 1, 2011

A mourning suburban daughter takes out her grief via murder.

Canadian novelist Cole (The Fearsome Particles, 2006, etc.) generates a bleak satire in his third outing, which falls somewhere between Heathers and The Stepford Wives on the vicious meter. "Everything began when Jean Vale Horemarsh had to look after her mother, Marjorie, who was dying of a terrible cancer in one of the soft organs," writes Cole in the clinical, eccentric style that characterizes the novel. It seems that the experience of looking after her dying mother has taught suburban potter Jean the true meaning of mercy, after a fashion. And oh how strange the woman's head can get. She almost pathologically ignores the failings of her marriage to her milquetoast husband Milt, who turns out to be having an affair with a friend, in her quest to ensure that her friends never suffer the indignities of old age. For starters, Jean takes her slutty friend Dorothy out for a night of drinking, skinny-dipping and fooling around with the local lads, before chopping her head off with a dull shovel. No less bizarre is Jean's lesbian liaison ("a little unexpected") with a college chum, ending with a poison-inducing back rub. For all its gruesomeness, there are reasons behind Jean's obsession, and the creepiest scenes are in fact outclassed by the book's more disquieting pauses. Among these disturbances is a flashback to Jean's childhood, during which she methodically drowns all of her stuffed animals in response to her mother's euthanasia of a litter of puppies, and a quiet interlude at a park where Jean shuffles her friends' names about on slips of paper, trying to elect her first victim based on her affections.

A shudder-inducing satire that meditates more on the dysfunctions of the living than on the tragedies of the dead.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 15, 2011

How far would you go to ensure your dearest friends' happiness? Would you donate a kidney? Or would you kill them with kindness, as does the middle-aged heroine of Canadian author Cole's (Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life) dark comic novel? Jean Vale Horemarsh's artistic aspirations--gluing Swarovski crystals to her fingertips, experimenting with bizarre ceramic constructions of leaves--always drove her sensible and overbearing mother to despair: "How can you possibly be a Horemarsh? You don't have a practical gene in your body!" But three agonizing months of caring for her dying mother awaken in Jean a new practicality. She is not going to allow her best friends to suffer old age's indignities. Instead, Jean is going to give them one final happy experience: "Death didn't have to be slow and agonizing and bleak." VERDICT In detailing Jean's mercy-killing spree in hilarious if sometimes gruesome detail, this novel, Cole's first to be published in the United States, won't be every reader's cup of tea, and a few flat chapters slow down its page-turning pace. But those who enjoy Zoe Heller's mordant take on female friendship (Notes on a Scandal) or the black humor of such classic films as Arsenic and Old Lace and Kind Hearts and Coronets will appreciate this fine social satire.--Wilda Williams, Library Journal

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2011
This satire examines, at length and in detail, the process by which a dreamy, ineffective producer of terrifically fragile pottery is changed by her mother's death into a driven, creative murderer. Having nursed her mother through the final stages of death from cancer, Jean decides to spare her best friends the pain of prolonged death by ending their lives. Jean's husband, Milt, who has had an affair with one of her friends, and her brothers, both members of the local police force, add to the absurdity of the situation. A major strength of this amusing yet horrifying novel is the detail in which Cole depicts characters and settings. Readers are right there with Jean as she walks the streets of her town, plans her mercy killings, and gathers the instruments she needs. The suspenseful plot is propelled by the desire to know whether Jean will murder all the women on her list. Exceeding the predictable by a long shot, this will beguile readers possessing a sardonic streak as well those who appreciate gallows humor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)