1. Did you find The Garneau Block compulsive
reading? If so, which jams or messes made it most addictive? Some
readers have claimed that this book has at least two guffaws per
chapter: did you find it as funny as that? Compare the veins of
humour running through the book. Which is its richest vein?
2. Dickens, Maupin, McCall Smith and Babiak give focus to entire
cities - London, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Edmonton - by
concentrating on cross-sections of their populations. Are the
characters you meet in The Garneau Block the
people you expected to meet when you opened a novel set in
Edmonton, a city that is best known to outsiders for its hockey
team and shopping malls? Malls and hockey players do appear in this
story but what does this author do to subvert the way we usually
think about such places and such people?
3. Todd Babiak has said "Canada is fading, we're being hijacked
by marketing." He believes that the best way of keeping ourselves
from being "branded" by global corporations (and defined by the
kind of coffee we drink in public, for instance, an issue of
importance to some of his characters) is to seek inspiration in the
areas of life that defy stereotyping. In what ways does he avoid
cliché when he deals with such common figures in prairie writing as
the lonesome cowboy and the adulterous housewife?
4. Alexander McCall Smith has said of The Garneau
Block, "Mr. Babiak is blazing a trail - every city should
have a story like this." In what ways are the stories of
The Garneau Block like the stories in your own
city? In what ways are they decidedly different? Are any of the
characters in The Garneau Block as familiar to you
as your own neighbours? Is there anything that defines each of them
as Edmontonian and/or Albertan and/or Canadian?
5. Madison Weiss is nearly 30, an underemployed English major
still living in her parents' basement, when she finds herself
adapting to a surprise pregnancy from casual sex with an anonymous
French Canadian hiker in Jasper National Park. Although she gets
down on herself for lack of obvious success in most areas of life,
she is clearly not an unlovable loser. What is it about her that
makes a reader sympathize with her and wish her and her baby well?
What are her strengths as a friend? As a romantic companion? As a
daughter? As a mother-to-be?
6. David and Abby Weiss, Madison's parents, are retired
schoolteachers whose political views on most issues are
diametrically opposed. He's a right wing curmudgeon. She's a left
wing environmentalist. What makes them well-suited to one another
despite their differing views? Does David's relationship with
Garith, his Chinese Crested dog, make him look foolish or more
human? Given his political views, is David's response to his
daughter's pregnancy believable? What accounts most for the changes
in his political views throughout the book? Self-interest?
Altruism?
7. As several interviews with the author make plain, Todd Babiak
is a man of many forceful opinions. However, due to the short
chapters and quick pace of a serialized novel, there's little room
for him to make his own views known apart from the words and
actions of his characters. The actor Jonas Pond and the former
philosophy professor Raymond Terletsky have much to say on many
topics. Is it accurate to say that Jonas and Raymond are polar
opposites at the beginning of the novel - Jonas being
life-affirming, Raymond being death-obsessed? Are they at the same
distance from one another by the end of the book?
8. More bad things happen to Raymond than to anyone else in the
novel. Why? What are his flaws? Does he deserve to lose his
teaching position for the acts he commits? Or is he punished too
harshly? Despite the fact he doesn't draw wise or sensible
conclusions from many of them, do any of his ideas still make
sense? What about his idea of mythic power? What about his plans
for 10 Garneau as a center of localized cultural mythology? Does
his wife, Shirley Wong, treat him too harshly or too leniently for
his misdeeds? What does her love for hockey and hockey players tell
us about her?
9. Everyone in the neighbourhood is fascinated with Rajinder,
the lone East Indian living in their midst. In what ways does Todd
Babiak turn the stereotype of the Asian immigrant inside out? What
is it in his relationship with Madison that ultimately makes
Rajinder feel "unconditionally happy"?
10. It's sometimes said that the decline of serialized fiction
in print media after World War II was due to television co-opting
the strongest features of the form and applying them to sitcoms,
dramas, crime series and soap operas. Does anything in The
Garneau Block remind you of a particular television
series? Which one? In what ways is it similar? In what ways is it
distinctly different?
11. Rajinder is involved with the arts as a patron and Jonas as
an actor. Discuss what we learn about the current state of the
performing arts in Alberta and what these characters teach us about
the role the arts play in community life.
12. Dickens, Maupin, McCall Smith and Babiak all weave the
incidents in the lives of various characters around unifying
storylines. What are the principal elements of the central story in
The Garneau Block? Which is a better description
of this novel: "the scandalous death of a neighbour and its
aftereffects on the inhabitants of a small Edmonton neighbourhood"
or "the reactions of a group of neighbours to the threat of
expropriation of their homes and redevelopment of their
neighbourhood by the University of Alberta"? How successful is Todd
Babiak at combining both these elements in one book? Does your
enjoyment of the book really depend on either of these things or is
it really rooted in something else? What would that be?
13. Writing in the Montreal Gazette, Pat Donnelly (a
born and bred westerner) claims that The Garneau
Block captures "the very essence of Edmonton" - "funny. .
. sophisticated and hokey at the same time." Is this an accurate
description of Edmonton? Canada? The Garneau
Block?
14. "Central Edmonton is a bizarre place politically," Todd
Babiak has said. "Provincial Tories call it Redmonton. You have
this Liberal and NDP bunker surrounded by a province of
Conservatives." As David Weiss discovers, it's a tortuous political
landscape to navigate successfully. Is the author even-handed in
the jokes he makes at the expense of politicians of each
persuasion? Can Babiak's own political position be determined? Is
he a partisan of any particular group or is he best described as a
prairie populist - that is, an advocate of the rights and interests
of ordinary people? Which character in the book do you think is
closest to the author? Which character is most unlike him?
15. Why is this novel called The Garneau Block?
Does "block" contain a play on words? In what ways are each of the
characters blocked or thwarted in their ambitions and desires? In
what ways do they collectively block or thwart the university's
redevelopment plans?
16. "If I do something that is distinctly Canadian (as a
writer)," Todd Babiak has said, "it's . . . to reconcile, politely
mostly, the diverse histories and ideologies that tear up other
countries." Discuss the ways in which The Garneau
Block succeeds in this quest for reconciliation. Are there
any outstanding issues left unresolved between the various couples
at the end of the book?
17. What do the author's experiences as a newspaperman
contribute to the way he portrays Edmonton? In what ways does the
city itself become a major character in the novel? Do the minor
characters we encounter make Edmonton less or more likeable?
18. Is it fair to say that Babiak's male characters are more
complex than his women? Are Jonas's internal conflicts as a gay man
closely and realistically observed? Or are they merely
caricatured?
19. At the end of the novel, after Rajinder confesses to Madison
that he is happy for the first time since his parents died and
Madison admits that she too is happy, he asks her, "Well. What else
is there?" Madison answers that question in silence: "Money, air
quality, Down syndrome, drinking and driving, nuclear
proliferation, global poverty, new country music, climate change,
semi-automatic weapons, fundamentalism, declining oil reserves,
cancer, crime, crack cocaine, reality television, being forced out
of your house, veterinary medicine." What would you include that
she leaves out?