People Park
by Pasha Malla
- Commended, Amazon.ca Best Books: Editors' Picks
- Short-listed, Amazon.ca First Novel Award
Shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book
It's the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes together for the event, we meet an unforgettable cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate loners. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven's illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of.
People Park is a tour de force of eerily prescient, grotesque, and hilarious observation and a narrative of gripping, unrelenting suspense. Malla writes as if the twin demons of Stephen King and Flannery O'Connor were resting on his shoulders. You've never read anything quite like People Park.
close this panelPeople Park is reminiscent of Gary Shteyngart or George Saunders ... vividly imagined ...
People Park is a zany and entertaining yarn ... more than a worthy followup to The Withdrawal Method; it's a merry microcosm.
... an imaginative feat ...
When I got to the last page, I wanted to flip the thing over and start right back at the beginning. I can’t think of a better testament to the pleasure of reading a novel.
... every sentence [is] a thrill ... [in People Park] we get a frightening picture of ourselves.
People Park is an ambitious and complex novel, impressively rendered and fantastic to read.
Written in breathless prose, it’s oddball fun, and Malla proves himself as a writer who never takes the easy way out.
[People Park] unfolds a unique and fully realized fictional universe in which the author explores themes of displacement, isolation, and reunification with flashes of dark humour.
The novel is a cacophony of comedy and heartbreak, magical realism and satiric wit, made melodically whole through Malla’s deft prose.
