For the Love of Mary
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Fifteen-year-old Jacob feels almost on the inside: almost smart, almost funny, almost good-looking, almost worthy of falling in love. His sister is too busy dating guys in Whitesnake jackets to notice, and his best friend is occupied with his own painful pubescent crisis. Jacob’s mother has just started a curious (and rather un-Christian) holy war with the church across the street, while his father has secretly moved into the garage.
Everything changes when Jacob meets Mary. Jacob thinks Mary is the most beautiful girl in the world. If only Mary’s father wasn’t the minister at the enormous rival church. If only she wasn’t dating a youth pastor with pristine white teeth and impeccably trimmed hair. If only Jacob could work up the courage to tell Mary how he feels . . .
As the conflict between the churches escalates, a peeping Tom prowls the neighborhood, a bearded lady terrorizes unsuspecting Dairy Queen customers, a beautiful young girl entices Jacob into a carnal romp in a car wash, and the church parishioners prepare their annual re-enactment of Operation Desert Storm.
For the Love of Mary is sidesplitting satire with a surprising amount of heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Foregoing the heightened absurdities of his novel The Last Hiccup, which won a Canadian Author Association National Award, Meades has written a more realistic narrative, albeit one laden with farcical elements. In the summer of 1996 in the small town of Parksville, 15-year-old Jacob's life is fraught with turmoil: his friend Moss is in the throes of pubescent lust; his sister, Caroline, is a wannabe makeup artist who's "completely incapable of eating a banana in a non-erotic way"; and his mother is obsessed with the Church of the Lord's Creation, an enormous new Methodist church across the street from their own Presbyterian one. As his mother and the Methodist youth pastor commence a battle of billboards over which brand of faith gets "to be in charge of what everyone thinks," Jacob cautiously kindles a relationship with Mary, the beautiful daughter of the rival church's minister. The story is charming if insubstantial, and Meades keeps things buoyant through his charismatically befuddled lead, as well as by interspersing moments of quiet humor with broad, irreverent set pieces such as the church's annual re-enactment of Operation Desert Storm. With a style and wit reminiscent of William Kotzwinkle, Meades has fashioned an engagingly droll coming-of-age tale set against a backdrop of gentle (yet barbed) religious satire.
