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Spadework: A Novel

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Overview

Lust. Infidelity. Betrayal. Murder. On a summer evening in Stratford, Ontario, the errant thrust of agardeners spade slices a telephone cable into instant silence. The resulting disconnection is devastating. With the failure of one call to reach a house, an ambitious young actor becomes the victim of sexual blackmail. The blocking of a second call leads tragically to murder. And when a Bell Canada repairman arrives to mend the broken line, his innocent yet irresistible male beauty has explosive consequences. In Spadework, Timothy Findley, master storyteller and playwright, has created an electric wordplay of infidelity and morality set on the stage of Canadas preeminent theater town. In this fictional portrait, intrigue, passion, and ambition are always waiting in the wings. Findley peoples the town with theater folk, artists, writers, and visitors (both welcome and unwelcome), and with lives that are immediately recognizable as "Findley-esque" -- the lonely, the dispossessed, and the sexually troubled. A story that ripples with ever-widening repercussions, a sensual, witty, and completely absorbing novel, Spadework is another Timothy Findley winner.

Editorial Reviews

Bestselling Canadian writer Findley, whose stylish and complexly plotted novels have acquired an appreciative audience, here departs from his usual dark scenarios to produce an erotically powered narrative in which all's well that ends well. The setting is the town of Stratford, Ontario, home of the Shakespeare Festival. Findley (Pilgrim) knows this world well, and he conveys it with atmospheric detail. The inadequacy of mere ambition, even when one has talent, is the lesson learned by rising actor Griffin Kincaid, when he realizes that luck and fate can also play havoc with dreams of theatrical stardom. After Kincaid refuses a sexual proposition by his manipulative homosexual director, Jonathan Crawford, he is denied the roles he'd been promised. Griffin's wife, Jane, a Louisiana set designer for the theater, is bitter because Griffin refuses to let her use her substantial inherited income to buy a home in which to raise their seven-year-old son. When, by chance, her gardener cuts a buried phone line, dramatic events ensue. The telephone repairman is a young Polish immigrant, inarticulate but strangely beautiful, and Jane is aroused. Attracted to the repairman yet worried by Griffin's inattention, Jane suspects that her husband is having an affair with an actress. Then she realizes he has capitulated to Jonathan's demands. Despite being a sexual bully, Jonathan is acutely sensitive to Shakespeare, and his insights are enlightening. A hopeful ending provides uplift, but does not, unfortunately, compensate for shopworn characterization and the overdone Tennessee Williams atmosphere. For Findley, this is a curiously slapdash performance. (Jan. 11) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Timothy Findley

Timothy Findley was born in 1930. A native of Toronto, Canada, novelist and playwright Timothy Findley initially embarked upon an acting career. Findley worked for the Canadian Stratford Festival and later, after study at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, he toured Britain, Europe, and the United States as a contract player. While performing in The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, Findley was encouraged by the playwright to write fiction. Influenced by film techniques, Findley's first novel, The Last of the Crazy People (1967) is a penetrating look at a family of "emotional cripples" from a child's perspective. With his character Hooker, Findley captures the irrational logic of a child's mind without treating childhood sentimentally.The Butterfly Plague followed in 1969. The Wars (1978), Findley's most successful novel, has been translated into numerous languages and was made into a film. The Wars uses the device of a story-within-a-story to illustrate how a personality transcends elemental forces even while being destroyed by them. In 1981 Famous Last Words was published. This fictionalization of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by Ezra Pound, a work that was already a "fictional fact," examines fascism. In Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984), Findley rewrites the story of Noah's Ark by giving voices to women, children, workers, animals, and folklore creatures, all of whom question Noah's authority. The novel turns into a parable that seems to challenge imperialism, eugenics, fascism, and any other force that endangers human survival. Again repeating an earlier text, Findley turns to Thomas Mann's Death in Venice to write The Telling of Lies (1986). This novel draws parallels between World War II atrocities and contemporary North America, which Findley sees as a metaphoric concentration camp. Findley died on June 20, 2002 in Provence, France 030

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

947.29 KB

Number of Pages

416

eBook ISBN

9780061186301

Excerpt from: Spadework by Timothy Findley

Chapter One
Stratford, Ontario, Thursday, June 25, 1998 Swirling people. Lights. Music. Enough to make a person dizzy. This was only the beginning. Then you had to get through the doors, hand over your tickets to someone you could barely see in the crush and, after that, find your seat.

Opening night -- and nothing in the world to equal it. The audience radiant with expectation-the actors sick with apprehension.

Everyone -- as the saying goes -- was there -- all the stars, all the rich, all the Festival Board and staff -- the artistic directorhis assistant -- the designer, the composer, the lighting and costume designers, the mass of visiting actors, writers, directors . . . And the critics, all of whom were attempting -- as always, without success -- to maintain anonymity. Who -me

They were somewhat overshadowed by the simultaneous presence of the Governor General and the multiple rumors of visiting actors Meryl Streep, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson and Jude Law. (These rumors seldom proved to be correct, but on occasion, some were true.) Nonetheless, the critics meticulously found their way to their aisle seats and stood waiting one by one, still feigning absence, until the rest of their rows had filled.

As always at Stratford's Festival Theatre, the evening began with fanfares -- trumpets, applause and the raising of flags. Because of the Governor General's presence, the national anthem would be played. People would stand -- most of them would sing and there would be extensive applause, since the Governor General was an extremely popular figure.

In the midst of all this, Jane Kincaid and her seven-year-old son, Will, made their way to their privileged seats in the orchestra, five rows from the stage, two seats from the aisle. They sat down -- stood up -- sat down -- stood up and sat down again as other members of the audience filed past them, laughing, smiling, excited, lost, apologetic, clumsy, graceful and awkward by turns. Sitting on Jane's other side was the play's director, Jonathan Crawford.

They barely spoke beyond the necessary acknowledgment that they were aware of each other's presence. After the national anthem Jane could see that Jonathan, as was natural, was almost catatonic with nerves, while his masklike expression said: nothing can possibly faze me -- I've done my job -- it's over and the rest will be theatre history ...

Jane Kincaid knew better, but said nothing. She was almost in the same state. Her husband and Will's father, Griffin, would be appearing that night as Claudio in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing -- and by all accounts, he was sensational and well on his way to stardom. Jane had deliberately stayed away from the dress rehearsal and the previews-wanting to savor the moment with Will.

Like all roads leading to the limelight, Griffin's had been long and arduous. He had begun his acting career at the University of Toronto -- on a dare, playing Brick in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He had broken his leg in a hockey accident and was bored. Since Brick wears a cast on his leg all through the play, Griffin's girlfriend of the moment, who was playing Maggie, the "cat" of the title, had said to him: why don't you give it a whirl After all -- a person never knows. What followed was the proverbial story of a duck taking to water. Griffin was stricken as by contagion and almost at once had given up the study of law.