Get Started On King Leary Originated By Paul Quarrington Offered As Leaflet

Leary was once the King of the Ice, one of hockey's greatest heroes, Now, in the South Grouse Nursing Home, where he shares a room with Edmund "Blue" Hermann, the antagonistic and alcoholic reporter who once chronicled his career, Leary looks back on his tumultuous life and times: his days at the boys' reformatory when he burned down a house the four mad monks who first taught him to play hockey and the time he executed the perfect "St.
Louis Whirlygig" to score the winning goal in theStanley Cup final,

Now all but forgotten, Leary is only a legend in his own mind until a highpowered advertising agency decides to feature him in a series of ginger ale commercials.
With his male nurse, his son, and the irrepressible Blue, Leary sets off for Toronto on one last adventure as he revisits the scenes of his glorious life as King of the Ice.
I really enjoyed Quarrington's invented turnofthecentury slang throughout King Leary, Little Leary's vocabulary is a mixture ofs excess, hockey goon, and egomaniac, Which is interesting for a character who seems to have no care what others think of him in his old age but for his title of King, While Quarrington's writing is unique, and the dialogue hilarious, the story is told in a bit of a heavy handed manner, where the last few chapters of the book seemed unnecessary.
Full of blarney, spit and spunk, and often drunk on ginger ale, Percival Leary was the king of the ice in his heyday, captain of the Ottawa Patriots, trained by monks and fearless in the rink.
King Leary now lives in a nursing home with his crony Blue Hermann, a former newspaper reporter, but when Leary is asked to travel to Toronto to film a ginger ale commercial, they pack up their canes and go.
This book has an incredible voice and truly memorable characters and is easily the best novel about ice hockey I've ever read maybe the only one I've ever readbut that doesn't take anything away from it.
This is a choice from a member of my bookclub, otherwise I doubt that I would ever had read it, And, had I been in a different mood, I probably would not have liked at all, But, there is something as “the right book at the right time”, and I did laugh lots in a moment when I needed to find a book that would make me laugh.


The characters are quite stereotypical, but humour is by nature stereotypical characterization, And Quarringtons humour is fresh, noncliché, It lacks a certain depth in plot and characters, but there is great originality in its humour, soit is,
.This book has been on my radar since I read and loved Bill Gaston's The Good Body, Someone suggested to me that I would probably like King Leary, And then when it won Canada Reads I mentally made a note that I still hadn't got around to it, It's too bad, because it's fing brilliant, This is purely selfish, but I met Paul Quarrington briefly at last year's Eden Mills festival, I think I said, Nice to meet you, I wish I could have said how much I loved his writing, It's probably for the best, though, Like Jim Cuddy, I probably would have overgushed, and there would be no invitation to the parties after that, : Anyway, read this book. I guess it's best if you know hockey, but it's so, so much more than a book about hockey, I am revising my review slightly, because when I last wrote, I was feeling "under the weather",

Although I grew up playing hockey, on frozen ponds, mainly, with the neighbourhood boys, I have never really enjoyed watching, or reading, about the sport, This book is, of course, not necessarily for a Hockey fan,

To quote a friend: A perspective, too, on the changes of attitude in media/sport relationships and the "hero" athlete,

So, in the end, I'd say, give it a "shot"! : Read infor Canada Reads, my review from January,:

Oh gosh, I am so glad I read this book.
Notwithstanding that I haven't yet read the otherCanada Reads candidates, I'm quite prepared to say King Leary should be "la premier etoile"!

Percival "King" Leary is an old man read "one foot poised to kick it" and former hockey legend.
As I was reading I did wonder for a while whether he really was a legend "in the books" or whether the highlight reels existed only in his own mind because I suspect that almost every Canadian male is or coulda been a hockey legend.
But it appears he really was "King of the Ice", We find out that he has been trotted out and honoured at the Gardens more than once and he is in the Hall of Fame,

Now, however, he is confined to a nursing home reliving his glory days in his own mind and by spouting off to whomever will listen, One day though he is contacted by an ad agency who wants to feature King Leary in a ginger ale commercial and so we are off to Toronto with the King and his wacky entourage his nurse, his ancient reporter roommate, his "loser" son and a couple of ghosts from the past to relive those glory days.


King Leary's adventure is both incredibly funny and incredibly sad, Lewd and bawdy, thoughtful and heartwarming, The King had his moments of glory, scoring winning goals, perfecting his signature move, moments in the sun, But of course there were costs and insults,

As Canadians we know the history of our national sport, the drinking, carousing, corruption, the evolution of the game itself, the road trips, the trades, loyalties and loneliness, shame and glory.
So all of Leary's memories ring very true,

It is a hockey story but it is much more than that, It is also a story of redemption,

Reserved for the Canada Day release challenge unless I can't help myself from foisting it on someone else as a "must read",

I think it makes for a great Canada Reads book, I found myself reading into it all sorts of things that I have no idea whether the author intended Clay Bors Clinton as our neighbour to the south for example.
Right or wrong, thought provoking, This is a light, mostly amusing read, but the humour is a little too overthetop for my liking, and the story doesn't evoke much from this reader,

But, as a light summer read, especially if you're a hockey fan, and maybe sitting on your cottage dock, sipping a Molson Canadian and humming our second national anthem, 'the hockey song', dum, da dum, da dum.
. . this book can be a charming read, I reread this book in Decemberand have a bit more appreciation for it than the first time through, I can see why it won for humour and won Canada Reads, but it is still not the type of book I like to read nor one I recommend to friends.
The writing is decent and the book may appeal to those who enjoy hockey,

The main character, an older man living in a senior's facility, makes a commercial with a current hockey star and along the way relives his own glory days as a hockey player in the early to mid's and as "King" of the ice.
Early on, it becomes apparent that he is not the most reliable narrator, has misconceptions about himself and how he was viewed by teammates and family members, and that he talks to people from his past who have died previously.
I read this because it won Canada Reads on CBC which, I should know by now, is a dubious honour, Canada Reads is a radio debate over several Canadian works of fiction, all of which are ok, but none of which ever appear to stand out in my mind.


King Leary, obviously a play on Shakespeare, is a bland history of an aged former NHL star, I wouldn't say to avoid it, but there are certainly plenty of other, better Canadian novels to read in lieu of this, This is a wild and wacky hockey novel, in which hockey enters the realm of the mythical, the supernatural, and the just plain weird, Let's say it's impressionistic rather than realistic,
Told in the first person by "King" Leary, a former hockey player and current nursing home resident, it is both the story of his early lifeencompassing childhood, a stay at a Catholic reform school for boys, and hockey fame and his current lifein which he comes to terms with and indeed seems to consider for the first time ever his relationships, notably with boyhood friend and fellow hockey player, the late Manfred Armstrong Ozikean.

I'm not sure how many of them are caused by hockey head injuries a subject I really shouldn't be joking about in this day and age, but King Leary is full of hallucinatory or not scenes of hockeyinduced bloodletting, hockeyplaying monks including a blind monk hockey goalie, and, well, all kinds of other crazy scenes and observations.
It's a fun if potentially confusing read,
Ultimately, though, it is a story of one man's attempt, at the end of his life, to make amends for past wrongs, By the time he gets his chance, you will be rooting for him, Beautifully done. A wonderfully fuuny book that manages to celebrate the great Canadian passion but which is much, much more than a 'hockey novel', The characters are beautifully rendered and Leary's awakening into understanding is both fantastic and believeable, I am no longer not much of a fan of the game but I truly enjoyed this novel,
Question: Why does the character always refer to the Toronto Maple 'Leaves' Every Canadian knows that it should be the Toronto Maple 'Leafs', The same reason that the Hot Stove Lounge becomes the Pot Belly Lounge I read this as it was a previous winner of Canada Reads, and I had read other books by Paul Quarrinton.


It is a humorous story about a former hockey star recalling his glory days, and the ups and downs of his career and his friends along the way.
Similar to sitelinkWhale Music The author does not shy away from painful subjects and the devastating impact of alcohol abuse,

King Leary is a poignant book, Yes it has wit and humour, but it is mostly the meditation of an elderly man on his life the good, the bad, his adventures and friends, all set against the quintessential Canadian backdrop of hockey.


Percival "King" Leary is a great character and is drawn vividly by Quarrington, His unique voice never wavers throughout the book, King reminisces about his life and his hockey career, and begins to see things more clearly, leading to some peace and reconciliation as he knows his life is coming to an end.
A strong theme in the book is alcoholism, which affects many of King's family and friends, How King comes to term with the effect alcohol has had on his life is a central part of the story, The book reminds me of thefilm Scrooge based on Dickens of course, wherein Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, So is King visited by the ghosts of his friends Clay and Manny, and his son Clarence, who help him understand that things were not always as they appreared, and allow him to make some healing choices.


Some of the best scenes in the book involve the four monks, who taught King and Manny about life and hockey when they attended the Bowmanville Reformatory.
The monks are unique characters that come and go from the narrative at key points, They add a touch of humour and spirituality to the story,

This is a well rounded book, Although it has some elements of magical realism, overall it feels like a true and essentially Canadian storyhockey and friendshipwith a little ginger ale thrown in for good measure.


Canada Reads winnerThis was a CBC Radio "Canada Reads" winner last year so my book club decided to read it, Nobody was impressed. Neither was I. Reading it was like being at a party where everyone there is drunk except you, It did provoke some discussion about hockey and its history, But I don't recommend it unless you are a hockey trivia fan,
Lesson learned: you can't always expect reality radio to come up with the best Whenever I can't sleep I often play a game, I go through the alphabet thinking of novelists I have read, Men first, then women and then, if it is a really bad night, children's authors, Most letters i have no problem with but 'Q', now that is always a struggle, So I hit upon a cunning plan, Going to the Cinema bookshop, an enormous, cavernous place with endless bookcases and shelves stretching over two floors I decided to find a couple of Q's, Paul Quarrington, of whom I had never heard, was one and this was the book i bought, A lovely first edition from, although yet again the GR librarians declare its ISBN as being from aedition, WRONG !! But the mechanism for changing and challenging seems so unwieldy that i can't be arsed,

Now you know why I picked up the book you may be interested as to what it was like, Excellent. That is what it is, It is funny and poignant and enraging and bizarre and unsettling and, most especially, Quarrington respects his readers, By that i mean he does not spoon feed his story all the time, he demands that we listen and concentrate and think, He doesn't signal every joke with huge unsubtle arrowing but will sometimes leave one ticking away in the narrative and it is only two or three pages later that the payoff will explode in the paragraph and the cleverness of development becomes clear.


The story is related by an old man living in residential care, He was a top ice hockey player and he tells, through flashback and encounters in his mind with long dead friends, his adventures and misadventures, We see everything through his eyes and as the story develops he becomes, quite clearly, an unreliable narrator, Not so much because he is untruthful but because he is blind to aspects of life which did not fit in with his plan or understanding,

Gradually, more and more of the hinterland of the story is explored or, if you will, the pencil sketches he has drawn of others' lives are gradually given shade and depth and perspective and this comes through encounters with his 'fallen comrades' arriving like Banquo's ghost to chaallenge the equilibrium of his old age.


Quarrington has a lovely ability to describe the natural world

Sometimes the canal would be whitecapped and rough, and I wouldn't think the wind was up and blowing over a storm, I'd think the water was angry.
Or sometimes it would be gentle, with little pieces of sunlight bouncing on it and i knew that the canal was happy and that if i went swimming the water would play on my body

or warfare It was like God slapped the world with the flat of His handgt The ridge started screaming

The sun and wind are staging a major coup, trying to replace the stubborn winter with fragile spring

He is great with oneliners

the reason he isn't dead yet is that even the Grim reaper has some pride

Blue Hermann got some of his best diseases in Toronto

They were Church people and their basic idea was you are a piece of dung but God is willing to help

The man can't carry a tune in a suitcase

I particularly liked Quarrington's take on one of my favourite slang expressions.
In England, if something is excellent, someone might say 'That is the dog's bollocks', Quarrington has his hero saying

Its the puppy's butt

For some reason this, as they say, really tickled my fancy.


Anyway the book is a moving exploration of friendship and how this can blind us

to truth, of ambition and how this can allow us to betray friendship and of how destructive our words can be.
How their knock on effect can resound a long while after they have stopped being shouted or spoken or even whispered,

Quarrington does all this without letting up on the humour, Gallows humour I suppose it could be called but it creates an atmosphere in the narrative which unnerves, At the heart of the novel is the relationship of Leary, our narrator, and his two best friends, both now long dead, Gradually, piece by piece and detail by detail the true history of events unfolds,

From early on in the novel Quarrington unsettles his reader, You know there is something lurking in the back story and as it dawns on you, you realize you knew it deep down all the time, His talent is that he makes us, his readers, discover this inevitable truth at the same time as Leary faces up to it, Its as if we are walking the journey with him, His unreliability as a narrator thus becomes the great strength of the novel, Leary is not a liar but a coward, He has fought against facing life because in facing it there would be, and indeed are, too many questions crying out for answers, The ghosts which rock his security are not wraiths from beyond the grave but his long buried conscience,

This book is, to coin a phrase, 'the puppy's butt',
.