Twenty-four-year-old James Thompson is in trouble. His record company is waiting for his third album, but Thompson has a good old case of writer’s block. In Home Movies, the remarkable debut novel by Ray Robertson, Thompson travels from Toronto to his small hometown of Datum, Ontario, where he finds all the material he needs to write songs from his eccentric family and the seductive 19-year-old aspiring poetess, Melissa.

Ray Robertson is the author of several novels, including What Happened Later, Gently Down the Stream, Home Movies, Heroes, and Moody Food. The latter two received starred reviews from Quill & Quire, and the last made it to the top one hundred lists of The Globe and Mail and The Vancouver Sun. In 2004, Ray published Mental Hygiene, a collection of his articles, essays, and book reviews. Ray lives in Toronto, where he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Toronto.

Robertson Ray's profile page

“Home Movies is hell-bent on taking up the post Gen-X slack and spinning the definitive yarn of disaffected longing and ennui. Often this produces the right twang for a fun hurtin’-song of a novel.”

Quill and Quire