The Best Laid Plans, Terry Fallis's
originally self-published debut novel is a satirical look at Canadian politics that
takes the protagonist back and forth from the nation's capital to the small town of
Cumberland. The story opens with the protagonist Daniel Addison in Cumberland slipping
on an unscooped dog dropping. His mission to find the next Liberal Party candidate for
the district is distinctly failing. As a desperate last resort, he has approached the
eighty-one-year-old Muriel Parkinson to stand for her sixth election bid against the
same Tory opponent who won victories over her five times in a row. She adamantly says,
"No!" Actually, she adamantly says, "No no no no no! ... Do not pass go! Do not collect
two hundred dollars. Security! Security!"
Through the romp of a
political campaign, Fallis addresses political issues that are relevant and important.
For instance, in the first pages of the novel, while talking with the moderately soothed
Muriel Parkinson, Addison sees she is reading a book titled Home Economics and
Free Labour, by Marin Lee, that he styles as a
"groundbreaking treatise on the unrecognized economic contribution of women working in
the home ... ostensibly for no income. ... a classic of feminist theory
...."
Addison eventually finds a candidate who doesn't mind running in
an election that is certain to go--yet again--to the Tory incumbent, but when his
candidate, curmudgeonly old Angus who is an engineering professor who loathes teaching
English classes, finds things going differently from the plan, all manner of adventures
and misadventures unfold. This is a funny and entertaining book that is equally
enlightening since Fallis was a staff member of the Canadian Federal government thus
well-situated to tell the ins and outs of government.
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