Unravelling Of An Okay Joker

Owen Marshall’s new novel makes the mayor of a Mainland small-town ponder the road not taken.

- Sally Blundell

The A&P Show is not what it was. The pickles and fruit preserves have gone, as have the garden blooms and sponge cakes, knocked from their tented perch by craft beers, freerange eggs and amateur paintings. From the back of an articulated Mack truck, Mayor Pat “Pearly” Gates addresses the crowd over the sound of wood chopping and shrieks from the octopus. “I may as well have been speaking Japanese,” he grumbles, as he heaves himself down from his impromptu stage.

Big sky, dry grass, searing nor-westers, simmering small-town preoccupations – this is Pearly’s stomping ground. Approaching what he hopes will be his third term as mayor, he drifts through local deputations, dredging reports and his cherished port-development plan with distracted ease. As the owner of Rawleigh and Gates real estate agency, he negotiates open homes and potential joint listings with assured complacency. He looks forward to calls from his daughter in Wales, he manages his son’s financial crises, he mumbles his support for his wife’s plans to go back to work. He has a