Last Resort: A Memoir

by Linwood Barclay

Book Overview

In 1966, when his parents abandoned their suburban Toronto split-level to buy Green Acres, a cottage and trailer resort in Ontario's Kawartha Lakes region, eleven-year-old Linwood Barclay's life took an unexpected turn. No more rec-room train sets. Now Linwood was hauling fish guts to the woods for burial, answering distress calls from women in the ladies' room who found themselves without toilet paper, and standing in leaky chest-waders pounding...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771010818
• ISBN13: 9780771010811
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.2" x 0.8" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Hilarious, with a bite

Linwood Barclay, one of the funniest writers in Canada, has written a memoir of his youth that will have every reader saying, "Yeah, I always wondered who owned those holiday fishing camp things on Lake Wishamagog." The Barclays did. But in this memoir, Barclay has done something much more ambitious than make the reader laugh with recognition on each page. He has what the humorist Joey Slinger calls "meatloaf memories", recalling the things that weren't so funny like a father's death and a mother's insane expectation that her son will remain in a parallel version of her world. I used to think funny was the hardest writing to carry off, but funny and painful is actually worse. The Camp Wishamagogs I drive by on the highway now radiate powerful emotions at me as I pass.If you're not into anguish, there's a lot of outhouse maintenance information in here for Red Green types.A beautifully handled memoir.

Linwood, this one's for you

Barclay has finally revealed his long buried genius in this masterpiece. I've been reading the Toronto Star for years and never actually found anything he said very funny, but this book defied all my expectations with its brilliant gems of sparkling Linwoodisms. Now if I had actually read the book maybe you should listen to me. Really I'm just writing this so he stops complaining in print that nobody's reviewed him.