Bad Ideas
A Novel
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Wildly funny and wonderfully moving, Bad Ideas is about just that — a string of bad ideas — and the absurdity of love
Trudy works nights in a linen factory, avoiding romance and sharing the care of her four-year-old niece with Trudy’s mother, Claire. Claire still pines for Trudy’s father, a St. Lawrence Seaway construction worker who left her twenty years ago. Claire believes in true love. Trudy does not. She’s keeping herself to herself. But when Jules Tremblay, aspiring daredevil, walks into the Jubilee restaurant, Trudy’s a goner.
Loosely inspired by Ken “the Crazy Canuck” Carter’s attempt to jump the St. Lawrence River in a rocket car, and set in a 1970s hollowed-out town in eastern Ontario, Bad Ideas paints an indelible portrait of people on the forgotten fringes of life. Witty and wise, this is a novel that will stay with you a long time.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A lot of what happens in Missy Marston’s darkly zany novel can be filed under the heading of bad ideas: running away from your family, getting pregnant as a teenager, jumping over the St. Lawrence River in a jerry-rigged rocket car. The plot revolves around teenager Trudy, who sews pillowcases for a living and looks after her brokenhearted mother and young niece. When daredevil Jules rolls into town, Trudy’s life revs into high gear. Set in a small-time eastern town during the ’70s, Bad Ideas is an intimate study of richly drawn characters who are well-meaning but realistically flawed. You’ll be rooting for them the whole way through.
